


Santa Claus is a Criminal Mastermind

by lovetincture



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Airplane Sex, Bathroom Sex, Bondage, Christmas, Consensual Non-Consent, Drugged Sex, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Holidays, Kink, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rough Sex, Smut, Somnophilia, Spanking, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-12 16:31:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 32,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Everything and the kitchen sink. Some angst, some fluff, a lot of smut, both kink and otherwise. I jump around in the timeline, but all fics focus on the relationship between Sherlock and John.* * *This is my entry for MissDavis's2018 Advent Ficlet Challenge. Each ficlet was written and posted in a single day during the month of December.Now featuring a directory for easy navigation.I'll help you find the smut (or avoid it, if that's more your scene). 😉





	1. Santa Claus: Criminal Mastermind

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. [Santa Claus: Criminal Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39632742): Sherlock and John talk Christmas traditions. Parentlock. G  
> 2\. [The seasons will change us new](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39661926#workskin): What if John hadn't accepted Mary after the big reveal about her past? G  
> 3\. [Je Souhaite Encore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39707571#workskin): Sherlock deduces a genie. X-Files crossover. G  
> 4\. [Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39731715): The song reminds him of Mary. Sherlock understands. G  
> 5\. [Upstairs, First Door on the Right](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39796350#workskin): John drags Sherlock to a Christmas party. Sherlock finds a reason to leave early. **Explicit**  
>  6\. [Like a love song, baby](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39824082#workskin): A proposal at a crime scene. Of course. G  
> 7\. [But comfort comes after pain, and joy can cut like a knife.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39859182#workskin): Nightmares. G  
> 8\. [40,000 feet over the sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39894360#workskin): Sex on a plane. **Explicit**  
>  9\. [Blood and Water](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39924567#workskin): An exploration of John and Harry's relationship. G  
> 10\. [A Beautiful Sight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39962313#workskin): Sherlock and John apprehend a criminal. G  
> 11\. [Medicine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/39993981#workskin): Chemical bondage. Content note: consensual drugged sex. **Explicit**  
>  12\. [If You Can't Beat 'Em](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40044144#workskin): Goddamn it, John wants a Christmas photo. G  
> 13\. [Like hitching yourself to a falling star](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40088930#workskin): John has a drink with Lestrade. They talk about Sherlock. G  
> 14\. [What's Offered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40113839#workskin): Rough sex and a fist fight. **Explicit**  
>  15\. [Do It For Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40149122#workskin): Sherlock can't sleep; John helps. Spanking. **Explicit**  
>  16\. [Bit Not Good](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40175048#workskin>For%20the%20Holidays</a>:%20Sherlock%20and%20John%20spend%20Christmas%20with%20the%20Holmeses.%20T%0A17.%20<a%20href=): It's a New Year's party, and Sherlock is trying. For John, he's trying. G  
> 18\. [Mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40245446#workskin): Sherlock is possessive. A study in sex. **Explicit**  
>  19\. [The Bunny King](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40290620#workskin): Somnophilia and dreams about rabbits. **Explicit**  
>  20\. [Peace and Torment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40328969#workskin): Boredom is a torment. G  
> 21\. [Tradition](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40365923#workskin): John starts a new holiday tradition. T  
> 22\. [Stars by M.C. Escher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40430180#workskin): John gives Sherlock the worst present ever. G  
> 23\. [The Bet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40459655#workskin): It's been weeks, but John has something to prove. Content note: gunplay, impact play, consensual nonconsent. **Explicit**  
>  24\. [Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876296/chapters/40479080#workskin): Love can mean many things. G

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teaching your child about Santa Claus is a time-honored Christmas tradition. Unless you’re Sherlock Holmes, in which case it’s a horrifying lie about a Machiavellian burglar.
> 
> Prompt: Believe

“John, why are you planning to  _ lie _ to the child?”

John’s eyebrows snapped together and his hands froze midair, still holding up the onesie he’d been planning to buy Rosie for Christmas. He’d said it was to be a gift from Santa and not thought anything of it until—

“Sherlock. You’re not seriously suggesting that playing along about the existence of Father Christmas is some gross violation of trust, are you?”

Sherlock crossed his arms. “Isn’t it? Teaching children that once a year a rotund man in a red suit breaks and enters via the chimney to leave behind presents for  _ good children _ , which suggests he has some kind of worldwide surveillance system that would make Mycroft drool—if you don’t call that lying, what would you call it?”

“Jesus, I don’t know, Sherlock. Having a bit of fun?”

“I fail to see what’s  _ fun _ about being told a lie by all the adults around you. If anything it’s a terrifying fiction.” 

Sherlock gave a little shudder, and John muttered something about no wonder the two Holmes boys turned out the way they did. He grabbed the onesie in a huff and went to the queue to pay for it, Sherlock trailing along behind enumerating the ways that Father Christmas was the perfect criminal.

* * *

They were still arguing about it by the time the cab pulled up in front of Baker Street.

“It’s not breaking and entering if he’s invited, is it? You could argue that by putting out milk and cookies, parents are welcoming Santa Claus into their home.”

“Yes, but aren’t there stories of poor, abused children receiving presents despite their wicked parents’ protestations? That implies that you can’t keep Santa out even if you wanted to.”

“Well who would want to keep him out? It’s  _ Santa _ .”

“It’s the principle of the thing, John!”

The rest of Sherlock’s rant was cut off as Mrs. Hudson came into the hallway to greet them. She was in a festive mood, wearing a cheerful red sweater and a fond smile, and she fussed over Sherlock and John, laden as they were with shopping bags full of gifts for Rosie.

“Better bring them in here,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

John was about to point out that Rosie was only two and probably still too young to go looking for hidden Christmas presents, but even Sherlock didn’t say anything, so he let himself be ushered into Mrs. Hudson’s apartment.

By the time they left—without the gifts for Rosie, which they’d agreed to let Mrs. Hudson hang onto—they were full of freshly baked pumpkin bread and delightfully buzzed from some wicked eggnog, and John had forgotten all about the ridiculous Santa Claus argument.

* * *

Which was why, when John woke up to find a tall, slender man in a white beard and a red coat skulking around the flat before dawn on Christmas morning, his first instinct was to tackle him. 

“John!” The figure under him yelled, and even muffled by the carpet, John would have known Sherlock’s voice anywhere.

“ _ Sherlock _ ?” He let him up, incredulous. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

Sherlock got up with a huff and leveled an affronted glare at him. Sherlock had a scowl that could leave the most hardened men of Scotland Yard quaking in their boots, but the effect was quite ruined by the ridiculous polyfiber beard. John took one look at him and started laughing, and once he started he couldn’t stop.

Sherlock huffed, “Really, John,” and it just made it funnier.

“Oh God, Oh God,” John gasped between fits of howling laughter. “The  _ hat _ !”

“You’ll wake Rosie,” Sherlock hissed, as if that made any sense at all.

It was a few moments more until John was able to get a hold of himself, until he was wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes and finally able to speak again. God, he hadn’t laughed that much in… he couldn’t remember when.

“Sorry? Wasn’t Rosie seeing you the point?”

“Of course not!” Sherlock snapped, apparently still put out by how funny John was finding this whole endeavor.

“What? Then what on earth are you doing sneaking around wearing that at four in the morning?”

Sherlock fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable. “You seemed to think that believing in  _ Santa Claus _ ,” Sherlock said the word like other people would say  _ flesh-eating bacteria _ , “is a crucial component of a happy childhood. You’re the expert on such things, so I thought—” he gestured at the presents he’d been in the process of leaving under the tree, the dish of cookies that was now empty but for crumbs. Sherlock— Sherlock who after all these years still ate only when John made him—had eaten cookies for Rosie. To give her a happy childhood.

John’s heart swelled with an overwhelming fondness for this madman. He grinned.

He couldn’t help ribbing Sherlock about it.

“You were going to make believe about Santa!”

“Yes, well. Obviously you needed help. Were you just going to  _ tell _ her Santa was here? Absurd.” Sherlock sniffed. “Clearly she’ll take after me. She wouldn’t have found the idea believable if there wasn’t physical evidence that Santa had broken in. A white beard hair here, a thread of  _ awful _ red polyester there—”

“You realize Rosie isn’t your biological child, right?”

Sherlock flapped the idea away with a hand as though it was preposterous. “Nature versus nurture, John. We’re raising her together, of course she’ll take after both of us.”

John pulled down that ridiculous costume beard and kissed him.

(He was so glad Sherlock didn’t know enough about pop culture to tease him with “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”)

  
  



	2. The seasons will change us new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if John hadn't accepted Mary after the big reveal about her past?
> 
> Prompt: Fireplace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a HLV fix-it because apparently I can't write straight Christmas fluff.

_“This is where you sit and talk, and this is where we sit and listen, then we decide if we want you or not.”_

John pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, hard enough that he could see stars, remembering the conversation they’d had that night. And then Sherlock had collapsed— _stupid_ Sherlock, who had ripped his stitches and sat in an armchair bleeding to death while trying to solve John’s marital problems.

And John hadn’t even noticed, that was what killed him. He was a doctor. He was trained to notice these things, _paid_ to notice them—and he hadn’t even noticed as his one and only friend, his best friend, bled out before his eyes.

Stupid Sherlock? Stupid John.

Maybe the pair of them really did deserve each other.

John had followed the ambulance to the hospital, of course he had. Mary had trailed along too, looking worried and hanging back, like she hoped that if she didn’t speak too much John wouldn’t notice her presence and would allow her to stay. He wanted her gone but didn’t have the fight in him to tell her so. She seemed to instinctively know what he needed—she hung back unobtrusively, and John pretended she wasn’t there.

Finally he had left the hospital. Sherlock had gone back into surgery, and he’d come out again. The bleeding had stopped. He was stable.

John blew out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding in. Mary reached out to touch his arm, and he twitched it back, just out of her reach.

“I need to go home and change my clothes.”

He’d been in these clothes for going on 48 hours now, and judging by the nurses’ furtive wrinkled noses, he was starting to smell a bit ripe.

Mary hesitated like she wanted to say something. She didn't. She nodded and let him go.

 * * *

John showered and changed his clothes, then immediately returned to the hospital. He wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to be there when Sherlock woke up, or because he didn’t want to be there when Mary got home.

She was giving him his space, but how long could that last?

He arrived to find that Sherlock had awoken from his surgery in record time—John tried not to think of the implications of that: narcotic tolerance, addiction, relapse—and was being a terror to the nurses.

“Glad to see you’re feeling better,” John said as a young woman fled the room wide-eyed and white-lipped.

“These people are morons,” Sherlock groused, letting his head fall back against the pillow with a thump. “I am _fine_ . I’m perfectly capable of returning home if these _idiots_ —” he pitched his voice loud enough that the medical personnel in the hallway leveled a glare at him “—would discharge me.”

“Because you did so well at following doctors’ orders and not reinjuring yourself last time, yeah?”

Sherlock would have recovered if John had been there to help him, to keep him in bed and cajole him to eat and stop him from doing anything as hare-brained as setting up a stake-out for John’s errant wife. He met Sherlock’s eyes and wondered if he was thinking the same.

John swallowed hard against the sudden, unwelcome feeling of guilt and cleared his throat instead.

He grabbed Sherlock’s chart and flipped through it, whistling low at the information there. “Internal hemorrhage and hemothorax. You’re lucky you didn’t die, you great bloody idiot.”

Sherlock made a noncommital sound that John refused to interpret as a scoff.

“Get me out of here, and I’ll give you the winning lotto numbers.”

John chuckled. “You haven’t tried that one of me in years. How much morphine have they given you?”

But the look on Sherlock’s face told him that he knew. It was a ploy, harkening back to old times all for the purpose of making John laugh. There was that lump in his throat again, and he looked away.

“I’ll tell you what,” John said, voice gone strangely soft so that it sounded foreign to his own ears. “You do what the doctors tell you, and I’ll take you home as soon as they’ll let you go.”

 _Home_ , he had said. _Home_ , not _Baker Street_. Neither one of them commented on it. The whirr and hum of hospital machines sounded deafening in the silence.

 * * *

John made good on his promise and took Sherlock home as soon as his doctors would allow it. He may have even thrown his medical degree around and said things like _I’m his doctor, I’ll make sure he gets bed rest and plenty of fluids._

It had been days since their conversation at Baker Street, and after the second day, Mary had called him nonstop until he’d turned his phone off. He turned it back on in the back of the cab, and his phone chirped with message after message and voicemail after voicemail. John stared at his phone for a moment before shoving it into his pocket. Sherlock glanced at him then returned to staring out the window.

He was uncharacteristically quiet, but John’s mood welcomed the silence. He studied Sherlock’s profile, running his thumb over the memory stick still sitting in his jacket pocket. It felt like a hot coal, its weight heavier than a little bit of plastic ought to be, burning its way through his pocket. The crushing weight of all those secrets, burning their way through his life and what it was supposed to be.

He knew Sherlock could feel him watching, but he didn’t say anything. He let John look. He held out a hand, palm facing up, and John stared at it a good long while before placing his own in it.

 * * *

John helped Sherlock out of the cab and up the stairs at 221B. It was a testament to how poorly the detective must be feeling that he allowed John to assist without a fuss, but he drew the line at John helping him out of his coat.

“Really, John, I’m not an invalid,” Sherlock snapped, but there was no heat in it.

John raised his hands in mock surrender and showed himself into the kitchen to start the kettle for tea. Everything was exactly where he remembered, and he didn’t bother asking permission. It was easy to fall into old habit, to busy himself in this kitchen as he’d done hundreds of times before.

“You’re busying yourself because you don’t want to think about Mary,” Sherlock observed from over his shoulder. “You find the presence of routine comforting, even if it’s the illusion of a routine long gone.”

John’s eyes flicked over Sherlock, taking in the way he was leaning heavily on the counter (for support) and the tight set of his jaw.

“Sit,” he said, ignoring Sherlock’s earlier comment. “I told your doctors I’d look after you.”

“Mother hen,” Sherlock griped, but he allowed himself to be led to the sofa, and he took the tea and medication John gave him without complaint.

They sat and sipped their tea, and a comforting silence settled between them.

“Do you want to look at it?” Sherlock asked, nodding at his laptop where it was half buried under a pile of papers.

John pulled his hand out of his pocket where he’d been worrying at the memory stick again.

“No,” he said, and he surprised himself. He pulled the thumb drive out of his pocket and stared at it, _AGRA_ scrawled on the stubby bit of plastic. Such a little thing to cause such devastation.

“It doesn’t matter,” John said as he tossed it into the fireplace. “I don’t care who she was, I don’t care who she is now, and I don’t care who she’s going to be.”

John watched it burn, saw his half-formed dreams of fatherhood go up in smoke along with the melting, twisting, bubbling mess in the fire. What a mess he had made of all of it.

“Why?” Sherlock asked at last.

John let himself look at Sherlock, really look. He took in the lines on Sherlock’s face that weren’t there _before_ , the bow of that cutting, brilliant mouth, those clear eyes that laid the world bare.

“She shot you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I don't care what Moftiss thinks: There is no way John would be okay with anyone who shot Sherlock and nearly killed him.


	3. Je Souhaite Encore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt: Memories**
> 
> Or, the one in which Sherlock deduces a genie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a weird one! All my fellow _X-Files_ fans, see if you catch the reference.

 

Sherlock hadn’t taken a case since the explosion at the pool. He grimaced at the thought, Moriarity and his great game. He had thought to call the consulting criminal’s bluff, pointing the gun at a pile of explosives, but Moriarty had called his. A sniper had lit up the Semtex before Sherlock could, before he could make a plan, before he could grab John.

Sherlock ended up in the pool, concussed and with temporary hearing loss in one ear, but otherwise fine.

John… John had not been fine.

Sherlock pushed the memory away. Sentiment, not worth dwelling upon. Mrs. Hudson had asked him to clean out the attic, and he had of course refused out of principle, but now he was bored (although not bored enough to return any of Lestrade’s numerous phone calls in the weeks since the accident). He figured poking around up here couldn’t hurt. He might find something of interest.

Which was why Sherlock was in the attic when a dead woman fell out of a carpet.

“Mrs. Hudson!” he called down the stairs.

Sherlock bent down to inspect the body. No noteworthy signs of decomposition. He got low and sniffed—no odor of decay. It was _fresh_. Well that was curious.

This day was looking up.

He took stock of the body. Woman of middle age, Caucasian descent, average build. Severe black bob—too black: hair dye. Dressed head to toe in black. Clothing: modern, bohemian, American. Something glinted at the corner of her right eye, and Sherlock pulled out his magnifying glass to take a closer look. Closer inspection showed it to be a small, round gem, possible dermal implant.

He reached out to touch it, and her eyes (pale, bluest blue) snapped open. Sherlock would deny it until the day he died, but he yelped and fell backwards.

She sounded nothing so much as _bored_ when she sighed and said, “Great. Here we go again.”

“You were in a rug in my attic.”

“Was I?” The woman asked, brushing flecks of carpet fiber from her pants and standing. “Oh joy.”

“French accent—you nearly lost it from several years spent abroad, good on you, but not quite—American-made clothes, incontrovertible loneliness that you bury in a job that you hate, orphaned as a young child, and you recently returned from vacation. _Why_ were you in a rug in my attic?”

The woman sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose like she felt a headache coming on. “Oh good, I’m _so_ glad to know that humans have gotten even more intolerable since I’ve been away.”

“Did I miss anything?”

“Pretty good. You missed the part where I’m a centuries-old _jinniyah_ , but other than that, spot on. Now hurry up and make your wishes. I was on _vacation_.”

“I wish to have proof that you are in fact a genie,” Sherlock said without missing a beat.

“We’re skipping the denial phase this time?” she sounded almost approving. “Gotta love a man who moves things along. Fine, it’s done.”

Sherlock looked around. “Where’s the proof? I don’t see anything different.”

The woman tapped her finger against her temple. “In here,” she wagged her fingers and said in her most sarcastic voice, “You’re now _totally_ convinced that I’m a genie.”

He thought about it. He was, in fact, sure that it was true. He found that very irritating.

“That doesn’t count,” Sherlock snapped.

She shrugged. “You didn’t specify. Now, moving on. Wish number two is waiting.”

“What’s your name?”

She shrugged. “Most recently I was called Jenn, so let’s go with that.”

It was likely he was having some kind of delusion brought on by lack of sleep. He hadn’t been sleeping since the incident. He never slept, but he had been sleeping even less than usual, and it was possible that severe sleep deprivation had finally caught up with him.

He was still, rather annoyingly, completely convinced that this woman was a genie. He might need medical assistance.

Still, this was _interesting_. Possibly the most interesting thing that had happened to him in days—no, weeks.

She waited, tapping her hand impatiently against her thigh.

“Jenn. I want my friend John Watson back from the dead, bodily whole and sound of mind, exactly as he was before the explosion that killed him.” Specificity, she had said.

“No,” she said. “Trust me, you really don’t. Meddling with the balance between life and death.” She hissed in sympathy. “That always gets sticky.”

“Fine.” He crossed his arms. “Then change the timeline. Make it so that the explosion never happened.” He corrected herself. “The specific explosion that took place in London on August 8th, 2010, which killed John Watson.”

She blinked once, twice.

“That’s a bit beyond my purview,” she said when she finally spoke.

That wasn’t a denial.

“Meaning you can’t, or you won’t?” Sherlock asked. He had her number now. The half-truths and nudges of implication. She wanted to trick him. Didn’t _djinn_ always trick people in the stories?

“Time magic is expensive,” she said, inspecting her fingernails. “It’ll cost you.”

“Take the last two wishes, then.”

“No, I said _expensive_ .” Her eyes glinted, and suddenly she looked a lot less human and a lot more fey. Dangerous. The room seemed to darken and she suddenly loomed larger than her average stature should allow. It was like looking death in its face. It was _fascinating_.

“Name your price,” Sherlock said.

“Your heart’s desire for your fondest memory,” Jenn said, and the dangerous otherworldly carriage that had been present not a second before evaporated like that. She looked like any ordinary Frenchwoman. She sounded bored once again, like she was reading from a pamphlet.

Sherlock frowned. “You said expensive.”

That didn’t sound like much of a price at all.

She grinned feral and wolfish. “You’d be surprised how many things come attached to your fondest memories. Dates, names, experiences, all mine in the bargain. Could be you lose whole years out of your life.”

“And if I refuse?”

She shrugged again. “Could still try for that zombie thing you were going for earlier.”

Sherlock thought of the bomb, of the explosion and the scent that lingered after: chlorine, metal, ash, burning flesh. The problem with an eidetic memory was that he could still smell it when he tried, and even when he didn’t. He could still see the look on John Watson’s face the second before the bomb went off, and it wasn’t fear—it was trust.

He had thought it would be alright. He thought Sherlock was brilliant enough to save them both. Sherlock had too, and John’s expression of perfect trust in the face of certain death—that was why he couldn’t sleep.

“I’ll do it,” Sherlock said.

She hummed. Was that sound pleasure or sympathy? “Picture your fondest memory.”

* * *

He was seven, and Mycroft was fourteen. Mycroft was home from boarding school for the summer, and Sherlock had scowled when he saw him. It had been Mycroft’s first year away, and Sherlock had missed him although he’d never admit it.

He didn’t have to. Mycroft sighed and gave Sherlock the astronomy textbook he’d brought as a gift. Sherlock didn’t say thank you, but he took it and spent the next week poring over it, tracing the constellations with his fingers until he could recite them even in his sleep.

That summer he played at being a pirate who navigated by the stars, holding his wooden sword aloft and pointing it towards Polaris. _Land ho!_

The day before he left again, Mycroft took Sherlock to the Royal Observatory with pocket money from their parents. They went alone, and Sherlock had thrilled to be in London, great bustling city that it was. He wanted to see _everything_. He wanted to never leave.

They stood on the Meridian Line and watched the show at the planetarium. The stars playing over that great dome were breathtaking, and seven-year-old Sherlock privately thought it might be the finest thing he’d ever seen.

They’d walked back home laughing in the evening chill, Sherlock talking excitedly about the stars and Mycroft happy to listen.

Sherlock didn’t say thank you. He didn’t have to

* * *

Sherlock opened his eyes and found them strangely wet. He blinked, dashing away the tears clinging to his lashes with a careless hand. Curious. Had he been crying?

“Well?” he asked. “My fondest memory, are you going to take it or not?”

“It’s done.” She looked at him, tilted her head. “That was a lovely memory, but it’s curious that it had nothing to do with the ‘friend’ you so badly want returned to you. Are you certain that was your most prized memory?”

“Certainly not,” Sherlock said, straightening his suit jacket. “You said fondest, not most prized. Should have been more specific. That was certainly the fondest I’d ever felt of…” Sherlock trailed off, disturbed. He couldn’t remember how that thought ended.

The genie squinted at him again. “You sure you’re not a lawyer? I always hate lawyers.”

“Not a lawyer,” Sherlock corrected. “A Holmes.”

“Holmes,” Jenn muttered to herself in a way that suggested she was declaring Holmeses, not lawyers, her new natural enemy.

“A deal’s a deal, I guess. Although that wasn’t very sporting of you.”

Sherlock shrugged.

“It’s done,” Jenn said. “Now how do I get out of here?”

“You’re not going to discorporate or something?” Sherlock asked, not at all in jest.

“I don’t like to do it while people are watching. The exit, if you please. My coffee is getting cold as we speak.”

Sherlock showed her out, taking care not to disturb Mrs. Hudson. Odds were good this was a delusion, and he didn’t want to explain. Just as he was closing the door just, Jenn poked her head back around. “And Holmes?”

“Hm?”

“Get some sleep. You look like shit.”

* * *

Sherlock woke with a start from a very strange dream. He was bent nearly in two, having fallen asleep in a chair that was much too small for a man of his size to have a lie-down. His back ached in a way that said he had pinched something.

He looked around the flat for John, or the genie, before chiding himself for his foolishness. John wasn’t here because he was still dead. Jenn wasn’t here because genies were a fairytale that originated in pre-Islamic Arabia.

But he went to sleep early that night, and in his bed. It was because he wanted to, and absolutely not because the genie he dreamt had told him so.

  


He awoke to the unmistakable scent of coffee and not, for once, the smell of carnage and flames. In the way of small favors, Sherlock figured that at least the olfactory hallucinations were becoming more pleasant.

There was a crash from the other room, and Sherlock was on his feet in an instant, dashing into the kitchen with his dressing down flapping behind him—

—where he found John puttering around, making entirely too much noise, forgetting where he’d left his mug just like he always had.

“Oh, sorry, Sherlock,” John said. “The head in the fridge gave me a fright. I didn’t mean to wake you. Although while we’re at it, can we talk about the head in the fridge? I—”

“You’re not dead,” Sherlock interrupted.

“‘Course I’m not.” John frowned, and his eyes narrowed. “Why? Did you poison the sugar again?”

“What?” He didn’t recall poisoning any sugar. Didn’t recall leaving a head in the refrigerator, for that matter, although it’s certainly something he conceivably _would_ do. It stood to reason that changing one event on a timeline would change everything that came after.

Oh, John was still talking. He looked like he’d said something that required an answer. No matter, unimportant.

“How did we escape Moriarty at the pool?” Sherlock asked suddenly.

John chuckled. “He got a phone call of all things, you know that.” And then as though it’d just occurred to him that Sherlock was acting stranger than normal—really, how did other people function? “Sherlock, are you feeling alright?”

Phone call. Sherlock waved him off, thinking. “What? Yes, fine. I’m fine.” He steepled his fingers under his chin. Interesting.

* * *

He finds out, later, that there is a whole section of his mind palace missing. The astronomy wing, gone completely, along with the memory of whoever it was that he had felt so fond of on that one day—which day was it? No matter.

Which is why, when John teases him about the solar system months later, he only pretends to mind.

_This is my hard-drive, and it only makes sense to put things in there that are useful. Really useful_

After all, he’d given up the knowledge for something that actually mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I borrowed Jenn the _jinnayah_ from one of my favorite X-Files episodes, "Je Souhaite". An X-Files/Sherlock crossover was a lot harder than I thought it would be (especially since I rarely write Sherlock POV), but I had a lot of fun! Hopefully you did too. :D


	4. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The song reminds him of Mary. Sherlock understands.
> 
> Prompt: Music

A song is playing, something sentimental and schmaltzy. An old Christmas tune. Sherlock rolls his eyes and the acerbic complaint is on the tip of his tongue when he catches sight of John’s face—nostrils flaring, mouth pressed in a thin line, fingertips turning white where they’re digging into the armrests of his chair. Slight tells to anyone else that all but scream at him.

“John?”

“We danced to this song. That first Christmas when you were…” He trails off.

“Gone,” Sherlock supplies as John says, “dead.”

Sherlock fidgets uncomfortably at the word.

“Do you want me to turn it off?” he asks at last.

John blows out a breath he’s been holding, looses his fingers from the sofa, flexes them one by one. “No, just… let it play.”

The croon of Frank Sinatra’s voice fills the flat, and John closes his eyes. His lips are moving in time to the words, just barely. He looks so far away, sitting there. Sherlock feels an familiar ache in his heart, watching John. The ache that says,  _ John Watson is hurting. _ The ache that says,  _ I must fix it. _

The recorded violins swell.

He’s talking again. “She was there when I was broken. I thought I’d die without you.” John looks at his hands. “Might have done. She showed me another way.”

Sherlock cross the room to where John is, brushes the hair from John’s forehead, tucks his chin over John’s head so they’re resting together like Russian nesting dolls. When he speaks, he can feel the vibrations where John’s back is pressed against his chest. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I’ve never begrudged you what you had with Mary.”

“You should have.” John’s brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you?”

“I wanted…” He looks into the fire as though he could see those years, those terrible years written there, and John wonders where he’s gone. “I wanted to give you that. A family. Happiness. Normality. I wanted you to have that.”

“You should have asked what I wanted.”

“I didn’t have to,” Sherlock murmurs into his hair.

They stare into the fire, quiet.

“I was always yours,” John says softly.

“But you were hers too,” Sherlock says, and there’s no judgement in it. He was. He is. Some part of his John would always be Mary’s John too. They had rituals, routine. They shared jokes and bickering that meant nothing but  _ I love you _ . They danced to a song.

That was the price for John Watson’s life, and Sherlock would pay it again and again.

The song ends and silence settles over the flat like the blanket of snow outside. Heavy, insulating. So fragile.

Sherlock doesn’t know what to say. He’s not good at this. So he says, “It’s okay that it hurts. Still. Now. It’s okay if it always hurts. It’s all fine.”

A ghost of a smile lifts the corner of John’s lips at the echo in those words.

“I loved her,” he says simply. He kisses Sherlock. “I love you.”

Sherlock gets up and restarts the song, and he holds his hand out to John. “Would you like to dance?”

John stares at him like he’s lost his mind before grinning wide and true. He takes Sherlock’s hand, and they dance.

Frank Sinatra’s voice fills the flat, and the snow falls outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to play with John-the-widower because as much as I hate the thought of John with anyone but Sherlock… in canon, he did marry Mary. He had her when Sherlock was “dead,” he had a child with her. He loved her, and then she died. That kind of loss leaves a mark.
> 
> In other news, I am _terrible_ for piling all this angst on you. I swear I'll give you some good, sweet, pure Christmas fluff sooner or later.


	5. Upstairs, First Door on the Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Gift
> 
> John drags Sherlock to the Met's annual Christmas party, and Sherlock finds a reason to leave early.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the rating change—here be NSFW content!

The Metropolitan Police Service was throwing their annual holiday party, and Greg had invited John and Sherlock.

At this point it was more of a token gesture. John had never attended in all the years he’d known Greg, and Sherlock had an even longer track record of nonattendance. But then, well. Harry had relapsed again, and John didn’t have the energy to sit through another one of  _ those _ holiday parties—Harry drinking too much of the Christmas wine, getting sloppy halfway through dinner and slurring through dessert, their parents pretending none of it was happening. Odds were good she’d have at least one belligerent outburst before the night was out, used to be at Clara but now probably at John.

No, John wasn’t up for that. Not this year, not for their first Christmas  _ together _ . This was the first holiday they’d spend as a married couple, and he was never one to be particularly sentimental, not really, but he was determined to make this Christmas at least a little special.

Sherlock flat out refused to go to his parents’ house for Christmas after a particularly nasty blowout with Mycroft over some state secret… something (he still didn’t really know what that had been about), and John didn’t have the heart to force the issue.

So the Met’s Christmas party it was.

They were meeting at a pub downtown, one John had heard of but never been to, and Sherlock complained the whole way there.

“Are you  _ sure _ we have to do this?” He asked, squinting at John. He ran his fingers teasingly up John’s thigh, drifting towards his crotch. “Surely we could just have a pleasant evening at home.”

“Stop it,” John said lightly, swatting his hand away. “Greg is our friend. And Molly, and— well, and Molly. It’s Christmas, Sherlock. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men. You’re supposed to spend it with people you care about.”

Sherlock sighed and pulled his hand back. “Then why are you making me spend it with those people?”

John pressed a kiss to Sherlock’s cheek. “You’ll enjoy it.”   
  


Sherlock did not enjoy it.

The night got off to a good start. They arrived at the pub and Sherlock swept out of the cab leaving John to pay, which was to be expected. They got inside, and the place was pleasant enough. Nice, without being too upscale. Nowhere a bunch of cops would seem out of place.

People were already there when they arrived, some John recognized and many more he didn’t. Sherlock’s whole body was positively radiating distaste, from his posture to the curled grimace on his face. John ignored it through the powers gifted by long practice. He scanned the room for a familiar face and nudged Sherlock when he found him. There was Greg, standing over by the bar chatting up a blonde woman John knew he’d seen in passing.

They picked their way to the crowd to make their hellos.

“John! Sherlock!” Greg said when he saw them, voice raised to be heard above the din around them. “You came!”

“Yeah, well.” John scratched his head. “We didn’t have any other plans, so it seemed like the thing to do.”

“Didn’t want to spend it with the families, eh?” Greg asked with a knowing sympathy. After spending so much time with Sherlock, John sometimes forgot that Greg was perceptive too. Not in the otherworldly, almost frightening way that Sherlock was, but in a down-to-earth way.

“God no.” He held out the bottle of scotch he’d brought tucked under his arm. “Here, this is for you. Happy Christmas.”

Greg took it and turned it over in his hands, appreciating the hasty wrapping job. There might have been a few small scorch marks from when one of Sherlock’s experiments had gotten out of hand.

“Cheers, mate.” Greg grinned and clapped him on the back. “Now let’s get you a drink. What’re you having?”

“Guinness,” John said to the bartender, who turned away to pour the beer.

“How’s the party?” John asked, turning to face the room. There was a good turnout.

Greg shrugged. “You know, office party. No one’s gotten onto a table yet.”

John blinked, surprised. “Do they usually?”

He laughed. “This lot? Not until they a few more rounds in them. Stick around and you’ll find out.”

John smiled and took a pull of his beer. Greg introduced him to the woman he was talking to. “Sandra, this is John. John, Sandra.”

“Pleasure,” John said. He frowned, looked around, turned back to Greg. “Have you seen Sherlock?”

“No, not since you came in. Haven’t lost him already, have you?”

John rolled his eyes. “You know how he is.”

He excused himself to find his wayward husband.

He wasn’t leaving Sherlock alone. God only knows what kind of havoc he could wreak in a bar full of drunk police officers. John would be shocked if someone hadn’t tossed their drink on him by now. He was picking his way through the crowd, avoiding tables and clusters of people huddled together when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

He switched his beer to his other hand to pull it out.

_ Upstairs, come at once. _

_ -SH _

John hesitated, trying to figure the odds that there was an actual emergency on the upper floor of this pub. He glanced back at the bar where Molly had arrived, gone to say hello to the gang with new beau in tow. It looked like Anderson was about to start dancing. Oh, he really wanted to see that.

_ Hurry. _

_ -SH _

John sighed and pocketed his phone. He set his beer on the closest nearby table and went to find the stairs.

He frowned. “Ladies Toilet, First Door On the Right” the sign at the foot of the stairs promised. The stairs themselves were a narrow, steep affair, hard to see in the dim light. Probably a bloody nightmare for drunk patrons, ambiance at the expense of a few scraped shins and bloodied noses, maybe a concussion or two. It was just as well he hadn’t finished that beer.

_ Upstairs _ was really nothing more than a small landing at the top of the staircase. There were two lone doors, and both of them were locked.

“Sherlock?” John called. He looked around. Tried again. “Sherlock?”

No answer. He pulled out his phone to text him, and then one of the doors opened, and he was suddenly yanked inside.

“What—” he got out before Sherlock’s mouth was on his, and he was being crowded against the wall. “Mmph.”

The rest of that thought was consumed by the hungry, biting kiss, and John gave as good as he got. He tangled his hands in Sherlock’s jacket and pulled him closer. Without breaking the kiss, Sherlock reached out with one long arm to latch the door shut.

His hands roamed over John’s torso, skimming over his sides so lightly that it rode the edge between tantalizing and tickling before settling on John’s hips to yank them forward into his own.

“I had a—”  _ Christ _ , what was he doing with those fingers “—beer downstairs you know,” John panted against Sherlock’s mouth. 

Sherlock nipped his lips, first one then the other. He raised an eyebrow. “Did you? I expect it’s gone by now. Pity,” he rumbled against John’s neck in a voice that suggested it was no such thing.

He was starting to work John’s fly open, deft fingers making quick work of the belt and shucking his trousers and underwear down around his knees. John’s eyes fluttered closed as Sherlock sucked a bruising kiss into his neck. He groaned, pressing forward into Sherlock’s thigh between his legs.

And just then a knock came at the door.

John’s eyes flew open, and he looked to Sherlock who gave him the most wicked grin before sliding to his knees on the grubby linoleum. John’s breath hitched at the sight of him: Sherlock Holmes, world’s sole consulting detective, on his knees on a dirty bathroom floor. His cock twitched at the thought of it.

Sherlock nuzzled John’s erection, rubbing his cheek lightly over the skin so John could just feel the almost-painful rasp of stubble and running his hands over the back of John’s legs in long, teasing strokes.

“This building is old,” Sherlock said, eyes dancing with mischief. “Built in 1546— terrible insulation, walls so thin they might as well be made of paper.” He hummed. “Something to keep in mind.”

“Oy, anyone in there?” Sally Donovan’s cutting voice had never sounded more unwelcome than it did in that moment, through those incredibly thin walls.

“Sherlock,” John hissed, about to push him back and pull up his pants, before Sherlock leaned forward and swallowed him down in one motion.

John couldn’t help the first long, low groan that startled its way out of him.

The knocking came again, more insistent this time, irritated knuckles rapping against the door, and Sherlock pulled off and went back down again, working in quick strokes and following with his hand, hollowing out his cheeks in a perfect suction that felt so right.

John’s head thudded back against the tile, and he sagged backwards, letting the wall take most of his weight. There was nothing artful about this, and it certainly wasn’t going to last long. John pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth to muffle the noises that were threatening to spill out.

He threaded his other hand into Sherlock’s hair, crushing those curls under his fingers for something to hold onto. He closed his eyes and just felt, the lewd sounds of Sherlock’s mouth working and the wet heat of it dragging him to the precipice in no time at all.

He opened his eyes and saw Sherlock looking positively filthy, lips stretched obscenely around his cock, and he lost it, coming with a choked off shout. 

Sally had definitely heard that.

Sherlock straightened, brushing off his knees and adjusting his suit. It was unfair that he still looked so perfectly cool and self-possessed, while John knew he must be a mess if he looked even half as wrecked as he felt. Only the flush of red on his cheeks and the slight swell to his lips gave Sherlock away.

“You might want to hurry. I imagine the line outside is getting quite long by now.” Sherlock said, and he looked positively smug.

John swore, yanking up his pants. “ _ Line _ ?”

“Only women’s lavatory, 19 women in the building at present, all of them drinking; Yes, John, line.”

John swore again and ran a hand through his hair. Well this was embarrassing.  _ Don’t mind us, just having a quick shag in the ladies’ _ .

He saw Sherlock surreptitiously adjusting his own erection and felt a certain schadenfreude as he took a deep breath and pulled the door open. Served him right, smug bastard. Both of them could be embarrassed, then—although part of him wondered if Sherlock was even capable of embarrassment.

“You know public indecency is a crime,” Sally smirked as soon as she saw them. John felt his face go beet red.

“So is that dress you’re wearing. Anderson’s going home with Rodriguez tonight, so I wouldn’t bother if I were you. Come along, John,” Sherlock said and swept out of the bathroom with a swirl of his coat, looking for all the world like it was just another crime scene, just another adventure.

“Freak,” Sally muttered.

John grinned. Sherlock: ever the one who got him into—and out of—the strangest situations. “Happy Christmas, Sally,” he said and hurried past the line of scandalized, whispering women to catch up to Sherlock.

When he did, Sherlock was already outside, head tipped up and watching the snow fall. The sight made him feel goofy for a second, sappy and sentimental. It looked like a scene that ought to be on a Christmas card.

“Did you do that just to get me to leave?”

“Of course.”

_ My husband the manipulative arse _ , he thought.  _ God, I love him _ .

“You know we never even got to eat,” John said, wistful. He’d heard their food was excellent.

Sherlock cocked his head. “Do you want to go back inside?”

John shuddered, thinking of the gossip that had surely spread like wildfire by now. “Christ, no.”

“Chinese?”

“Sure.”

Sherlock stuck his hands in his pockets and nudged John with his elbow. John slipped his hand through, and they walked down the street arm in arm.


	6. Like a love song, baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Do you see what I see
> 
> A proposal at a crime scene. Of course.

Sometimes Sherlock liked to do this, for a reason that John couldn’t entirely figure out: He liked to make John comb the room for clues, rattling off everything he could see along with all the deductions he could make from it. When John was feeling charitable, he assumed that Sherlock was trying to train him to have a better eye for detective work. When it had been a long day like this one, he assumed Sherlock was doing it to torture him.

There were two bodies lying prone in the middle of the room. Husband and wife, and a knife lying between them. They were curled together in a twisted, bloody embrace. It looked almost… peaceful if you didn’t look at their faces. He shook his head. He’d been spending too much time with Sherlock.

“Most of the blood’s in the bedroom,” John said. He walked from the bedroom to the living room where the bodies rested like a gory tableaux, following a thin trail of blood. The whole apartment smelled like copper. “He killed her there and then carried her here.”

He bent down to get a closer look at the bodies. “Scratches on his face and arms. She tried to fight him off. Phone broken in the bedroom, looked like it was thrown against the wall. She was cheating on him, or he was cheating on her maybe.” He frowned at the dead couple on the floor. “He loved her.”

  
Sherlock snorted. “Fine definition of love, that.”

John shrugged. “You wouldn’t hold someone as they died if you didn’t love them, even if you were the one to kill them.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock said, and John couldn’t tell if that was  _ very good, John _ or  _ it’s cute when you try to think, but you’re completely wrong. _ “And…?” he prompted.

John cast his eyes about the room, looking for anything else, some small Sherlockian detail he might have missed. “Think that’s it,” he said at last. He was sure there was some vital clue that would solve the case—a fleck of mold on the carpet, maybe—but whatever it was, it was visible only to Sherlock. 

Wait.

His eyes flickered to Sherlock’s hand where it dangled at his side. A flash of gold glinted in the light filtering in through the dirty windows.

John’s eyes narrowed, and he grabbed the hand in question. “Are you wearing a wedding ring?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, plucking his hand back from John’s grip. “We were only engaged for 9 hours and 37 minutes before you noticed.”

“ _ What _ ?” John nearly choked on his tongue. “Sherlock, you realize people usually  _ ask _ their significant other if they want to get married, right? You can’t just declare us engaged.”

“ _ Boring. _ What’s the point of asking when I know you’ll say yes?” He ticked off reasons on his fingers. “We live together, we love one another, neither of us are planning on going anywhere—yes?” He looked to John for confirmation, who nodded. “So why do I have to ask?”

John’s mouth worked silently while he hunted for an answer to that. Sometimes he felt like he was trying to explain human social customs to an alien, and this was one of those times. “It’s just… nice, that’s all. It’s the thought of it. Most people like to remember the moment.”

“Hm.” John could see the wheels turning in Sherlock’s head before he came to a decision. “Fine.”

He gracefully sank to one knee beside the two bodies of the grisly murder-suicide, careful to avoid the blood— “Double homicide,” Sherlock murmured. “Killer fled after making it look like murder-suicide.”

“Such romance,” John teased, but he grinned.

Some of the Yarders were gathering in the door, whispering in hushed voices. He was pretty sure he heard Sally’s muttered  _ freak _ among them, sounding rather more fond than usual.

But Sherlock didn’t look at their audience, or the bodies, or all the fascinating evidence in the room that only he could see.

Instead, he pulled out a ring that was the mirror image of the one on his finger, his eyes fixed on John’s. He cleared his throat and even had the grace to sound a bit nervous when he asked, “John Hamish Watson, will you marry me?”

“‘Course I will.”

John hauled him up for a theatrical, swooping kiss to the sounds of whooping and raucous applause.


	7. But comfort comes after pain, and joy can cut like a knife.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Comfort and joy
> 
> But comfort comes after pain, and joy can cut like a knife.

**I. Comfort**

Sometimes Sherlock woke up screaming from nightmares. It wasn’t something they talked about in the daylight hours. It was just something that happened and they dealt with, like everything else in their lives. He’d wake up both himself and John, thrashing around in the covers, and John would get up, flip on the light, and make them both tea.

They pretended that this was what they did, that they were up by choice and not because of the dreams hiding in the dark. There was laughter on those nights. John worked on his blog, and Sherlock scowled at his email. Or John picked up a book and read aloud, and Sherlock criticized and huffed and hemmed and rolled his eyes; but he snuggled up to John in the covers of their bed, and he wrapped him up tight in arms and legs without letting go.

Those nights, sometimes John would talk himself hoarse. He read. He told stories from his life and talked about Rosie and anything good, carding his hands through Sherlock’s hair until he fell asleep dozing against John’s side. Those nights John stayed up until dawn and kept watch for both of them.  


The worst nights, though—the worst nights were the ones when Sherlock did not wake up, when he laid in the dark thrashing, crying quietly and begging in Serbian. Those nights, John’s heart broke with not knowing what to do.

He kissed Sherlock’s cheeks and came away with salted lips. He covered him with his body and held him tight, as though he could chase out the horror if he only gripped hard enough. Those nights Sherlock seemed so impossibly fragile, and John imagined he could feel the bones shifting beneath his grasp.

He knew those dreams, or if not those, then dreams just like it: dreams painted in hues of sand instead of snow, but just as drenched in blood. He held Sherlock close. He willed his pain to stop. He wondered why it didn’t feel good enough.

Sometimes after those dreams Sherlock disappeared into his head for days on end. He played the violin by the window for hours while John brought him cup after cup of tea. Sometimes he took them away empty, and sometimes he took them away cold.

Sometimes Sherlock would abruptly stop playing as he walked by, just to brush the back of his hand against John’s in passing.

_You are here, and I am here._

There was comfort in it.

 

**II. Joy**

But then there were nights—other nights, better nights—where Sherlock slept peaceful and untroubled, and it was John’s turn to lie awake in the dark. And on those nights he watched Sherlock, just watched. And on those nights he thought, _Yes, this man._ This _man, I would follow to the ends of the earth. This man I would bleed for, kill for, die for._ He knew with a frightening certainty that he would wage wars for this man.

On nights like this, he was suddenly, acutely aware of a joy so sharp it cut like pain. A blinding, aching sweetness that felt like bleeding, or howling, or dying. It seemed cruel that the joy of having was irrevocably bound up in the fear of losing.

He brushed an errant lock of hair from Sherlock’s eyes—it was getting so long now—and Sherlock stirred, turned towards John like a plant to the sun, to a body loved so long and well that they knew each other even in the dark. _Even in sleep_ , he thought, and the truth of it struck through him. It bit at the marrow of his bones.

“I would know you anywhere,” John murmured against Sherlock’s sleeping hair, caught in the delirium between waking and sleep to say the things too mad to be spoken by light of day. “Cut out my eyes and tear off my hands, and I would know you by the way my heart pulls towards yours when you are near.”

He pressed his nose into the hollow behind Sherlock’s ear, inhaling the sweet sleepiness of him. He drifted towards nothing, letting his limbs go heavy where they were wrapped around his whole world, all the bony, brilliant mess of it. “Even in the dark, I would find you and find you.”


	8. 40,000 feet over the sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Gingerbread
> 
> Plane sex. Need I say more?

Mycroft had found himself at a loose end and asked Sherlock to take a case in Washington D.C. It seemed there was an important public official with ties to the British government, and Mycroft very badly wanted this person indebted to him— wanted it badly enough to offer Sherlock access to some spooky prototype cooked up in a government lab somewhere. John still wasn’t sure what it was or did, exactly, but Sherlock’s face had lit up like a Christmas tree when he’d seen it, and so here they were: 40,000 feet in the air on their way to the United States.

John was regretting every minute of it. He was spending his time cursing Mycroft, curisng Sherlock, and especially cursing himself for having said that some time away might be  _ fun _ .

It was nothing of the sort.

It turned out that Sherlock was an unholy terror on an airplane, and John could have smacked himself for not seeing that coming. Of course he would be. Of course. So now John was stuck in a metal tube hurtling through the sky with 170 pounds of destructively bored detective.

“ _ Bored _ , John,” Sherlock said, thumping his head back against the seat. He was practically vibrating in his chair.

“Yeah, well, read something,” John suggested, tossing the in-flight magazine into Sherlock’s lap.

Sherlock opened it and paged through it at a speed no one in the world could read at. He made a noise of disgust. “Mindless drivel.” He tossed it back at John.

“You didn’t even look,” John protested, catching it.

“Ads, more ads, propaganda luring unsuspecting flyers to visit yet another overpriced tourist trap, a crossword that’s already been solved, and something called a  _ Sky Mall _ .” His lip curled as though the very idea of a Sky Mall offended him.

John dug around in his bag. “Look, do you want a cookie? Gingerbread, I think. Mrs. Hudson sent them.”

“I don’t want  _ cookies _ .” Sherlock’s sulk deepened, but his usual method of sighing and flouncing away in his dressing gown was out thanks to the lack of space. Sherlock compensated by sighing louder for good measure and moodily shifting so his back was turned towards John in his seat. He rested his head against the window.

It was actually kind of funny. John rolled his eyes and flipped open the magazine himself. To his chagrin, Sherlock was right: the magazine was dull as dirt. He felt Sherlock moving again and glanced over to see Sherlock looking at him, eyebrow cocked and wearing the most insufferable smirk as he saw John’s expression paging through the magazine. John ignored him, reading the magazine with a dogged determination. Apparently you could get a velour dog bed for $49.99. Maybe he’d get Sherlock one for Christmas.

He gave up and shoved the magazine back into the seat back pocket.

The worst of it was he couldn’t even get a drink to make this awful flight go by faster. Sherlock had almost immediately insulted every single flight attendant aboard the plane, and now they all gave John dirty looks as they walked past. Any attempt to flag one down was met with a cold shoulder.

Sherlock started kicking the chair in front of him, much to the annoyance of the passenger sitting there.

_ Kick, kick, kick.  _

_ Kick, kick, kick. _

Finally the woman turned around and huffed, “Do you  _ mind _ ?”

“No, but your husband does. Maybe you should try to be a little more discreet with your extracurriculars?” he retorted nastily.

She gaped at him and turned an alarming shade of puce, mouth working as she stuttered out something incomprehensible and angry.

“Oy!” John said. He kicked the leg Sherlock was still knocking against the seat. To the woman he winced and said, “Sorry.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she disappeared again. A moment later her chair reclined all the way, dropping so its back was almost touching Sherlock’s face. He opened his mouth, and John said “ _ Don’t. _ I swear to God, if you get kicked off this plane, I will leave you there.”

Sherlock pouted, but he did stop. Thank God.

John was more well-domesticated than Sherlock, but he was starting to feel antsy too. He checked his watch and groaned. Six more hours. He closed his eyes and pulled the scratchy blanket around him. He might as well try to sleep.

And that’s when Sherlock decided to start flicking the overhead light on and off. John resolutely ignored it at first. He was a soldier; he was used to sleeping in inhospitable conditions, but Sherlock had managed to find the world’s most annoying sequence for the lights. It was just random enough that John absolutely could not tune it out as much as he tried.

“What are you  _ doing _ ?” John growled finally.

“Bored.” Sherlock said.

“Well stop it,” John snapped. “I’m sleeping. Maybe you should try it.”

“You won’t fall asleep anyway,” Sherlock said. “You might if you reclined the chair, but you won’t. You’re too conscientious, polite even. You don’t want to bother others.” He gave the seat in front of him one last spiteful kick. “Unlike some people.”

The woman in front did something in her seat that made it rock back and hit Sherlock in the face, and John couldn’t help his snort of laughter. He ripped off the blanket. “Fine, have it your way. You’re bored? Let’s play a game.” John looked around the cabin, struck by a sudden fit of inspiration. He saw a woman sitting across the aisle to their right and nodded in her direction. “22B— Tell me about the passenger”

Sherlock eyed him, suspicious. “What do I get if I win?”

“Nothing. You get to not be bored for however long this can keep you busy.”

Sherlock scoffed. “I’m not a child, John. You needn’t make up games to entertain me.”

“Yeah, except clearly I do or you’re going to get us both detained by whatever security they have on these things.”

“Fine, 22B.” Sherlock glanced in her direction. “Easy. Married mother of two traveling alone for a family emergency. She keeps checking her phone to see if her husband’s called. She’s not used to the lack of reception. Her husband’s back home watching the kids, their eldest can’t be more than 3 or 4— she’s worried. Lower middle class, they couldn’t afford to fly the whole family out. Red-rimmed, puffy eyes so not a happy occasion: probably a funeral.”

“I’m impressed,” John said, and he meant it. He cast around the cabin for a new target. “26K”

“He’s on a business trip. Vain, those are new hair plugs that haven’t fully healed yet. Anxious about the steady creep of age— he’ll have a gaudy sports car at home in an awful color. Probably red, but possibly yellow. He’s planning to cheat on his wife.”

They did a few more, and just as John had hoped, it did actually keep Sherlock busy. He looked focused and keen again, not full of that scattered, buzzy energy that suffused him whenever he’d gone without a case for too long. John took a selfish enjoyment from it too. He never tired of watching Sherlock lay people’s secrets bare with nothing but a look.

Just then the plane jolted, and John felt his stomach drop. Sherlock’s hands reflexively clutched around the armrests of his seat. The plane lurched again, and Sherlock’s knuckles went white.

“Turbulence,” John said, brushing his hand over Sherlock’s.

Sherlock gave him a tight-lipped smile, and John frowned. He didn’t know Sherlock was afraid of flying.

The plane made another series of bumps, and John looked to Sherlock to make sure he was alright. He wasn’t expecting what he saw. Sherlock was  _ blushing _ , breathing in quick, shallow breaths, his eyes half closed.

_ Oh _ .

John wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, but he didn’t need to be in order to understand that look. He’d put it on Sherlock’s face enough times himself in bed, the shower, on one memorable occasion an alley after a case when they were particularly keyed up.

John leaned in close, so close that his lips were brushing Sherlock’s ear as he spoke. “Sherlock,” he whispered, faux-scandalized. “Are you turned on right now?”

“Perfectly normal— _ ah _ ” a sudden sharp turn mid-air “reaction to adrenaline. Some people get it from roller coasters, you know.”

John made a mental note to take Sherlock on more roller coasters.

“Is that  _ normal reaction _ getting uncomfortable?” John asked, looking pointedly at the seam of Sherlock’s pants where he was visibly straining the fabric. Sherlock hesitated, searching John’s face to figure out what game he was playing, then nodded.

John settled his blanket over Sherlock’s lap and looked around to see if anyone was listening. The plane was dark, and everyone was asleep or else focused on their movies. No one was paying any attention to them. 

He leaned back in to talk in Sherlock’s ear again, voice pitched low and soft. “I could do something about that, you know. I could take you into the bathroom right now and have my way with you.” Sherlocks breathing picked up, so he kept going. “You’d have to be quiet, and we both know you’re not very good that. Would I have to fill your mouth with something, do you think?”

Sherlock nodded, his eyes closed. John could just imagine the red blush that must be creeping up his neck right about now. He wished he could taste it.

“It’s a small bathroom. It’d be crowded. Too tight to move, pants around your ankles, you’d be trapped. I’d have you standing up, all shoved against the door just feet away from all the passengers. Would you be thinking of them? Wondering if they know what I’m doing to you?” 

He chanced a nip at Sherlock’s neck, dragging his teeth along the sensitive skin that ran down beneath his ear, and Sherlock tried and failed to stifle a groan. The half-choked sound punched John with a wave of hot want, and he immediately regretted giving away his blanket. He shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. He licked Sherlock again just to feel him shiver.

“So where were we?” John asked. “Ah, my prick up your arse and my fingers down your throat so you couldn’t scream. You’d try to hold it in, wouldn’t you? All those beautiful noises you make, but I think I could drag them out of you.” He glanced down and saw that Sherlock was surreptitiously rubbing himself now, the scarcest movements under the blanket.

“I’d take my fingers out of your mouth so I could hear you say my name. You’d come and everyone would know. You’d come with my cock in you, looking so lovely while you beg for it, and then then everyone would know that you’re mine.”

The plane chose that exact moment to make one last swooping plummet, and Sherlock’s eyes went wide. If John could have bottled and kept that startled expression forever, he would have. Sherlock reached for him and crushed their lips together in a bruising kiss, and John swallowed up all the little noises he made as he rode out his climax.

After, Sherlock had the most mystified look on his face. He looked at John as though he had caught and catalogued a mythical creature, something one of a kind. John soaked it in, snuggling up against a Sherlock that was now blessedly quiet and still.

“I’m not bored anymore.”

John chuckled and pressed a kiss to his cheek.


	9. Blood and Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Frost
> 
> Blood is thicker than the coldest water, but loving your family doesn't mean always liking them. Or, an exploration of John and Harry's relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if this one is kind of short, slapdash, and late. Between severe jet lag and hanging out with family, the next couple days of prompts might be hurried as I grab whatever writing time I can find. Bear with me. <3

When John was a child, Harry dared him to stick his hand in a big bowl full of ice water. To see which one of them was tougher, she said. John was a younger brother, and he was stubborn to his core. He always had something to prove, so of course he said yes.

He was 7, and she was 10, and they plunged their hands in on the count of three. He didn’t know that cold could burn before that day. He held his hand under until it was aching with cold, until his fingers grew pained and then numb, until a deeper, more terrifying ache set in.

Harry was stubborn too, and she held her hand under so long that she started to cry. Sullen-faced little girl with a short haircut she’d done herself, tears streaking down her cheeks and defiance on her face—that was how he always remembered her. In the end, Harry gave up first. She withdrew her hand blanched white and tinged with blue, and their mother had come to see what the racket was about. She yanked John’s hand from the water, cuffing him on the ears and scolding him in a voice soaked through with fright.

She fussed over Harry and insisted on taking her to the doctor who said words like  _ hypothermia _ and  _ frostbite _ , explained what prolonged cold did to a person’s extremities and why they mustn’t do that again. All John thought was that he had won. 

“I’m the tough one,” he told Harry later that night while they were both lying in their beds in a room they still shared.

Harry smacked him with a pillow in her unbandaged hand, and it turned into a midnight pillow war their mum had to break up. They were like puppies fighting in those days, forever nipping at each other’s heels for the joy of it, and he fell asleep feeling smug.

  
  


It was funny the things you remembered, specific points in a life with no certain significance. It had been almost thirty years ago, but John thought back on that night whenever Harry called him in a drunken stupor, crying that Clara was going to leave, or ranting about their father, or any one of a hundred maladies real and imagined.

Tonight was one of those nights. They hadn’t spoken lately. It had been so long that John had almost forgotten about Harry. Truth be told, these days he liked forgetting.

They’d just come off a case, and Sherlock was contentedly cataloguing different varieties of dirt on the dining room table. John was puttering around the flat thinking about calling Mike Stamford to get drinks. They’d made idle plans to catch up, and that’s why when the phone rang, he picked up without so much as looking at it.

John was in the kitchen washing up and boiling the kettle for tea, trying on lines for the write-up of this last case.

“‘Lo?” He said, expecting to hear Mike’s voice on the other end.

“John?” came a shaky voice over the line.

“Harry.” John closed his eyes.

“How are you, baby bro?” Slurred, drunk. Of course. It didn’t make him angry anymore so much as it just made him  _ tired _ . He suddenly felt so very old.

“Fine,” John said. He really didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to talk about his life with her and pretend that she cared (That’s not fair. He knows that’s not fair). Luckily, they both knew that wasn’t what these phone calls were about.

True to form, she launched into her latest grievance with Clara in their on-again-off-again. She talked, and he wondered why Clara came back time and again after all the little hurts. Death by a thousand cuts, that. He looked at Sherlock and thought maybe he understood.

“She threatened to leave,” Harry said. She was trying to sound like she wasn’t crying, but you don’t live with someone for 15 years of your life without learning what they sound like on the verge of tears. “She said this was the last time.”

Once, he’d have felt compelled to comfort her, to offer advice. Once, infamously, he’d even agreed to speak to Clara on her behalf.

“ _ Don’t, John,” Clara had said. “I know you mean well, but you just don’t know what it’s like. I think it’s best if you mind your own business.” _

After years of dealing with Harry’s shit, he thought that was remarkably kind of Clara.

The kettle whistled and John switched the phone to his shoulder, tucking it into the crook of his neck so he could pour hot water into two mugs. Sherlock gave him a look, and John turned away to shield his face. Some things were too private, even between the two of them.

“You’ve always been the tough one,” she whispered, voice sounding watery.

John sighed.

“I’ve got to go. We’re on a case,” he said into the receiver. Then, hesitating, “Take care of yourself, okay?”

Harry started to say something, but the reply was lost as he pulled the phone away and hit the red  _ end _ button. He tossed the phone onto the counter and braced himself against it with both hands, breathing like he just went twelve rounds. “Christ,” he said, shaking his head, trying to shake it loose.

It wasn’t like it was even a particularly hard conversation. He’d had worse in his time. Much worse—ODs and blackout fist fights worse. It was just, well… it was just that it never got easier, either.

He glanced over to Sherlock who was looking at him, observing. Sherlock didn’t pretend that he wasn’t looking, didn’t try to pretend to mind his own business, and John appreciated that. People usually pretended and did a shit job of it.

The good thing about Sherlock was that he didn’t ask questions whose answers he already knew. He didn’t ask, and John didn’t volunteer anything. He knew.

The phone started to ring again, and John cursed under his breath. He stabbed the reject call button and let it go to voicemail.

It rang again. John was reminded, somehow, of holding his hand underwater. He felt that same prickling, stabbing pain spreading through his chest.

Sherlock’s eyes flicked from the phone to John’s face, to his clenched jaw and fingers wrapped too tightly around the handles of the forgotten tea mugs. He rose from his chair abruptly and John braced for a hug he didn’t want just now, or for pity, or for some comment probing and incisive..

“I’ll make dinner,” Sherlock said instead, and he set about clearing the counter of the detritus of his experiments, deftly sweeping it all into a box. In went John’s phone too, with deliberate carelessness, with blessed probable deniability.

It rang again, but by then Sherlock was carrying the box down the hallway and into his room. The ringing grew fainter and fainter, easier to ignore. The phantom chill biting at John’s heart subsided just a bit.

Right as the guilt was starting to creep back in, Sherlock swept into the room in a whirlwind of activity. If John had thought making dinner was an idle threat, he was wrong. As promised, Sherlock did indeed cook, making a spirited mess of the kitchen but producing a hell of a meal.

“I didn’t even know you  _ could _ cook,” John teased.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Contrary to what you might think, I did manage to survive 30-some odd years before I met you. Of course I can cook, John.”

He refilled John’s wine glass and launched into a story about going undercover as a cook to solve a case years ago. The stories and wine kept coming until the early hours of the morning. 

Sherlock was in rare form, deftly distracting John with tales shocking and funny in turn, tales that would have defied belief coming from any other man. John laughed all night, and by the time he finally poured himself into bed his stomach was aching with laughter and his head felt fogged with wine but clear of guilt.

He found his phone on his bed, laying on the pillow. When he picked it up, he saw an unread text:

_Guilt is pointless._  
_You are now and always the best man I know._  
_-SH_

Liquid warmth spread through his chest.


	10. A Beautiful Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: A beautiful sight

The Christmas tree was enormous. It was easily four times John’s height, and they were standing close enough that he had to crane his neck to see to the top—not that he could see much at the moment. Trafalgar Square was pitch black and noisy with the dull hum of people talking. A woman with a microphone was thanking everyone for turning up this evening, and everyone was waiting for the giant tree to be lit.

For his part, John had his hands stuck beneath his armpits, trying to get warm. It was a cold night, and standing around idle wasn’t doing much to fight off the wet chill that had settled into his bones. He glanced over at Sherlock who looked for all the world like a bloodhound scenting the air. If John didn’t know any better, he would have thought Sherlock capable of seeing in the dark.

He frowned at Sherlock’s distracted demeanor. Sherlock was the one who had suggested coming here tonight, which John had thought was odd but had accepted readily enough. He had been so shocked by the offer to come watch the lighting of the tree that he wasn’t even put out by the prospect of standing in the freezing cold of a London winter for an hour. Sherlock didn’t even seem to want to be here.

At last the woman wrapped up her lengthy speech, and all at once the square was bathed in light as the tree lit up. The crowd gave up an enthusiastic round of  _ ooh _ s and  _ ahh _ s. A little girl standing with her parents nearby clapped her hands, and her pealing laughter rang through the courtyard. John couldn’t help but smile at her because her simple joy was contagious.

The tree really was beautiful. Strings of light bulbs illuminated it from top to bottom, and it cast Trafalgar Square in a rich, warm glow. He could feel a sticky-slow smile spread over his face, and he nudged Sherlock with an elbow. No answer. The detective was uncharacteristically quiet, so John glanced over at him. Sherlock was wearing a look of intense concentration, and he wasn’t even looking at the tree. Instead he was scanning the audience looking for something.

“Sherlock?” John asked.

Sherlock hushed him with a raised hand and a soft hiss, and his eyes flicked here and there over the crowd. At last, he seemed to find what he was looking for, and he took off at a run, hurtling full-tilt into the crowd. Shocked and offended utterances were left in his wake as he shoved through the tightly packed throng.

“Oh, for—” John took off after him, yelling “Sorry! Sorry!” As he jostled people aside.

He pulled up short as he crested the next cluster and found a man sitting astride Sherlock, knife raised to his throat.

“Put it down!” John yelled. His gun was in his hand before he’d even made the conscious decision to reach for it. Chalk that up to years of military service. “Put it down or I shoot.”

With the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he felt like he could see everything, every tiny minute movement: the twitch of the would-be assailant’s mouth, the harsh rise and fall of Sherlock’s chest that belied his poker face. Just as John thought he was going to have to shoot the man, he let the knife clatter to the pavement, sticking his hands up.

Everything happened fast after that. Sherlock twisted his hips and flipped the man so he was pressed face down on the ground. John kept his gun trained on him. The people nearest the commotion realized that someone had a gun, and they started running and screaming. The families and tourists gathered for the tree lighting ceremony started panicking at the screaming, and pandemonium broke out.

“Gun! Someone has a gun! Call the police!”

And then of course the police watching over the event came over to see what was the matter.

“Oh, hell. Sherlock, run!”

“But John, this man—” he got out, doubtless about to protest the loss of a criminal suspect, but John had had quite enough excitement for one night, and he wasn’t looking forward to spending the remainder of it in a cell. 

He hauled Sherlock to his feet. “Come on,” and took off at a run. Now it was his turn to yank Sherlock through the crowd. It was easier since people had started to disperse, but now there were police on their tail.

Once they’d gotten their head start, Sherlock took the lead and led them up fire escapes and down alleys. They took a maze-like path that confused John so the Met definitely stood no chance. He didn’t even realize where they were until Baker Street came into view. It looked much different when approached by back alley.

“Did that remind you of something?” Sherlock asked.

John stared at him blinking before he realized what he meant. A pair of handcuffs, running from the Met in a frightfully similar situation, and then what came after. “Are you…  _ joking _ right now?”

Sherlock smiled, a hesitant little glimmer of a thing.

“Right now of all times is when you decide to crack a joke?”

Sherlock frowned. “Not good?”

_ Bit not good _ , he could have said and left it at that, but now John was wound up, and he wasn’t about to stop now. “And while we’re at it,” he said, slamming his hands on either side of Sherlock’s head. What he lacked in height he made up for in sheer ferocity. “Let’s talk about how you brought me out here for a case and didn’t think to tell me.”

Sherlock’s frown deepened. “John—”

John held up a hand and cut him off. “Unless you’re going to tell me that you just so happened to piss off a random man enough that he held a knife to your throat—possible, by the way—I don’t want to hear it.”

There was a long, pregnant silence.

“I thought you’d like he lights,” Sherlock said finally. “It’s sentimental, traditional. All things you like.”

“The bloody lights, oh for Christ’s sake, really? I did like the lights, but  _ you _ don’t. And anyway, since when do you bring me along on a case without telling me? I need to know what you’re about, Sherlock, otherwise how can I protect you?”

“Is that what this is about?”

“This is about you lying to me!” It sounded thin even to his ears. “Alright, no. Yes, that's what I’m upset about. I’m upset because I saw a man with a knife to your throat not ten minutes ago, and you’re cracking jokes.”

“I’m… sorry?” He pronounced it like a foreign word half-remembered from a guide book, and John’s righteous anger fizzled away, leaving him deflated and sore from the chase. 

“Did you like the lights?” Sherlock asked again. He looked like he actually hoped John did.

John scrubbed a hand over his face. “The tree was beautiful.”

Sherlock scoffed. “Pedestrian. Not half as brilliant a sight as you pulling a gun in a crowded square.” He pulled John in by his jumper with a wicked glint in his eye. “But I’m glad you liked it.”

The rest of the night almost made up for the knife incident.


	11. Medicine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Toy soldier
> 
> Sherlock reflects fondly on sex under the influence, and John is curious. They give each other an early Christmas present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content note: consensual drugged sex**

Somehow, they had gotten onto the subject of illegal drugs Sherlock had taken—specifically roofies, of all things—and Sherlock got a blissed out, faraway look on his face. “Ah,” he said. “That was… something else,” and that’s all he had to say on the matter.

John was more startled at Sherlock’s sudden lack of words than anything else. That Sherlock had enjoyed sex on drugs wasn’t very farfetched. It didn’t require a stretch of the imagination to figure that out. However, now that he had that mental image… He pictured Sherlock split open on some anonymous stranger’s cock, blissed out, utterly pliant and uninhibited. Then his traitorous brain imagined himself in Sherlock’s place. 

He felt his face heat and shook his head to clear the vivid images, and he wasn’t sure if he found the idea disturbing or arousing or both.

Sherlock had a queer look on his face. “John.”

“Yep?” John asked, too chipper. It was pointless—he never could hide anything from his husband, but a man could make the attempt.

“Do you want to try it?” Sherlock asked, and John’s heart leapt into his throat. “I could get you something to take. It really is something else.” His face grew wistful once more, and John was pretty sure his looked like a tomato.

“Ah, no.” John said. Cleared his throat. “No thank you.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Pity. Would have been fun.” And in a manner most unlike his usual self, who was brilliant but also selfish and stubborn as anything, he left it alone. Sherlock didn’t bring it up again, and it was as if that particular conversation had never happened.  
  


And that would have been the end of it, except that now John really, really couldn’t stop thinking about the offer. It was a lot like being told not to think of a pink elephant. Pink elephants and drug-induced orgies abounded.

Christmas was coming up, and a half-formed plan was taking shape in his brain. He called in a favor from Sarah who knew someone at  Warneford. He told her it was for a case and beyond the skeptical look she turned on him, she didn’t question him further. “Don't make it a habit,” she warned him before handing him the bottle, and John had the good grace to look abashed.

That was how a week before Christmas, John stopped Sherlock in the kitchen to hand him a bright orange bottle of prescription pills. Sherlock’s eyebrows shot up, and John had the distinct pleasure of reveling in the rare element of surprise. Sherlock was never surprised.

“Ketamine,” he breathed, wonder dawning on his face as he comprehended what John was offering. “Does this mean…?” he asked, needing to hear John say it.

“Just once,” John said. “Call it a Christmas gift, yeah?”  _ For him or me? _ He looked at his feet. “I know the therapeutic and fatal dosages, but I don’t know how much for…” he cleared his throat. “You know.”

Sherlock nodded once and pocketed the pills. “Leave everything to me.”

* * *

The next week passed, and it was soaked in anticipation. John was antsy. It felt like he had a perpetual low level of adrenaline buzzing through his veins. It didn’t help that from time to time Sherlock would catch his eye when he was particularly distracted, and a slow, wicked smile would spread over the other man’s face. He looked like the cat that had got the cream, and it filled John with trepidation shot through with desire.

 

But it turned out that John needn’t have worried at all. Sherlock didn’t come up behind him with chloroform or spike his drink while he was unawares, as he’d been half convinced would happen. And John was sure it said things about him that he’d expected that and thought  _ yes please _ instead of  _ run _ —things he didn’t want to examine too closely.

No, what happened was this: Sherlock led John into their bedroom with an unusual gentleness. He’d done something to dim the lights, and it was warm enough that John wanted to shed his jumper. The room was startlingly clear of its characteristic clutter, and on John’s bedside table there was one small glass of orange juice. 

He just knew. John took it in his hand, held it against what light there was to speak of, and turned it this way and that, looking. It looked just like orange juice.

He shot a questioning glance at Sherlock who nodded at the glass. “I broke open the capsules and weighed out the correct dosage for a man of your weight and build. Do you want to hear my calculations?”

John thought about it. He really didn’t. Before he could change his mind, he tipped the glass back and drained it in one go. It tasted bitter in a way that even the sweetness of the juice couldn’t hide.

Sherlock’s face did something complicated as he watched John drink it down. Adoration, lust, wonder, love. He took the empty cup from John’s hand and set it on the table before pulling him in for a slow, lazy kiss. He threaded his hand through John’s hair and kissed him until they had to come up for air.

John pulled back, nervous. Every second that passed, he was waiting to feel  _ it _ . Waiting to be suddenly hit by a wall of nausea, or emptiness, waiting to feel high. He hadn’t done drugs beyond a little weed in uni. He rubbed his hands along his jean-clad thighs for something to do with them. 

“Okay?” Sherlock asked, brows knitting together. “If you want to stop, I’ll sit with you until it’s over.”

John shook his head, licking his lips. “I don’t want to stop.”

“In that case,” Sherlock stilled John’s hands where they were still fussing with his trousers. He picked up one hand then the other and rubbed them gently between his own in turn.

“Relax,” he said, voice soft and hypnotic. “Don’t do that. Don’t wait for it like that. Here, let me show you.” He started unhooking the buttons of John’s shirt. He kissed every new inch of skin exposed, laving it with tongue and the tickling brush of lips. He stripped John unhurriedly, taking his time and pausing every so often like he was just drinking him in. It wasn’t until John was bare that he quickly shucked his own clothes, efficient and methodical.

Sherlock got them into bed and positioned John on his stomach so he could sit astride him. He kneaded the muscles of his back in long strokes. When Sherlock dug into the meat of John’s shoulder with an elbow, he couldn’t help groaning aloud. Everything about the massage felt amazing. Even the air that had felt too warm earlier now felt delicious and decadent against his skin. 

His eyes fell shut and he let himself get lost in the sensation. Time seemed to slip away as he drowsed there, and he only opened his eyes again when Sherlock abruptly stopped. It was hard to do, he noticed. His eyelids felt so very heavy. 

“It’s alright,” Sherlock soothed, returning a hand to rest on John’s lower back, anchoring him with a touch. “I’m going to turn you over now, okay?” He’d never heard Sherlock so gentle, but even his soft voice sounded loud in the quiet room.

John nodded.

Sherlock rolled him onto his back, and John noticed for the first time that the rest of his body felt leaden too. His limbs were heavy, and he raised one arm experimentally, twitching his fingers for the purpose of watching them. It was an odd sensation, like he was moving through water. It was almost like watching someone else’s body.

Sherlock watched him as if trying to decide something. “How are you feeling?” he asked, and although he was right beside John, he somehow sounded far away.

“Strange,” John said with effort, and his voice sounded odd to his ears, slurred and rough.

“That’s alright,” Sherlock murmured, still speaking softly. “Can you move your fingers and toes for me?” John complied, twitching them in turn. “Good,” he said, and kissed John’s throat.

It should have been alarming, the present difficulty of controlling his own body, but John felt far away and unconcerned. It was so  _ nice _ to not worry about anything at all for a change.

“What do you say if you want me to stop?” Sherlock asked in John’s ear, and the warm heat of his breath sent a full-body shiver through John.

“Stop,” John whispered and was rewarded with a soft kiss pressed to the corner of his mouth.

“Now?”

John shook his head. He tilted his chin up to meet Sherlock’s lips, and the next kiss had Sherlock nibbling on his bottom lip and soothing the tickling sensation with licks.

“Open for me,” Sherlock said, and his tongue pressed against the seam of John’s mouth. John did as he was told. At first he tried gamely to match Sherlock’s kiss, but his coordination was shot. He quickly gave up and surrendered to the experience, letting Sherlock have him. It wasn’t so much a kiss as Sherlock licking into John’s open mouth, sliding their tongues together and exploring.

It was desperately hot, and John heard a whining moan that took him ages to realize was him. He might have felt embarrassed about it if he could bring himself to care, but right now Sherlock’s hands were all over him. In the dim lighting, John couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed.

And then Sherlock disappeared, and in his confusion John thought he might have  _ actually _ disappeared out of this plane of existence (where?) before he felt hot, wet heat engulf his cock. He groaned aloud. He was still soft—the drug, maybe—but whatever Sherlock was doing with his mouth felt unreal. He heard an answering moan and slitted his eyes open to find Sherlock crouched between his legs at the foot of the bed, suckling at John while slowly pumping his own cock.

John’s toes curled at the sight, and that set off a new and strange wave of sensation. It went on and on. The concept of time was slipping from him. He didn’t know if it had been five minutes or fifty. And then Sherlock’s slicked fingers were sliding lower, playing against the skin of his opening, and Sherlock stopped mouthing at John to ask, “Can I?”

God, moving was hard.

He managed a nod because saying  _ God yes, want you now, take me like this _ seemed too ambitious at the moment. This was, he supposed, one of the perks of having a lover who could read whole paragraphs in the set of a man’s face. He understood John perfectly even in his drug-addled state, and John felt a rush of warmth in his chest at the thought.

But Sherlock didn’t just forge ahead. He continued to tease the puckered entrance until John was gasping, until he even found the effort to say  _ please _ , until he was begging slurred and broken.

Finally,  _ finally _ , Sherlock pushed a finger in, and John could have wept at the relief of it. Still he went so torturously slow, adding another finger and then another only when John felt like he would go out of his mind with need. He was gentle, twisting deft fingers to brush against John’s prostate on every stroke, taking him apart with surgical precision.

When John was sobbing with pleasure and starting to fight against the drug in his system, trying to shift his noncompliant hips to chase the  _ more _ that was eluding him, Sherlock finally took pity on him and entered him at last.

The feeling of fullness was everything. John closed his eyes and let the world blink out of existence until there was nothing but Sherlock in him, moving just so, taking care of him.

There was something strangely erotic in just lying there and letting it happen. John dragged his eyelids open once to look at Sherlock, and the tenderness in his face was too much. He slammed his eyes closed again and focused on the feeling, abject confusion and pleasure sucking him under like a wave, outside of time and adrift in tactile feeling.

He was so far gone that his orgasm took him by surprise. 

It felt like flying, or falling.


	12. If You Can't Beat 'Em

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John wants a holiday card with a Christmas photo, and he's willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get it.
> 
> Prompt: Season's Greetings

It shouldn’t be so bloody hard to take a Christmas photo. A woman at the clinic had started a photography business doing headshots on the side, and she was trying to find willing subjects to practice on. To that end, she was offering free Christmas photoshoots to all the staff. 

“To put on greeting cards,” she said. John had demurred. He had no intention of inflicting Sherlock on his coworkers any more than necessary. The times that he showed up unannounced were already trouble enough.

Still, the asking had put the idea in John’s head, and he had mooted it to Sherlock. They could take their own Christmas photos. It might even be fun.

“Absolutely not.” was the immediate reply.

“But why not?” John asked, incredulous. It hadn’t seemed like such a big ask, really.

“Because Christmas cards are so  _ tedious _ , John. The detritus of a short-sighted obsession with the consumerism of Christmas. It’s puerile bragging, showing off—that’s all it is.”

John was unimpressed. “Or,” he suggested, “It’s a nice way to keep in touch with loved ones. You know, ‘peace on earth, goodwill towards men.’”

Sherlock snorted. “If people really cared, they’d keep in touch the rest of the year and not just when obligation beckons.”

“It’s  _ nice _ , Sherlock.”

“It’s not.”

They were at an impasse.

Still, John hadn’t lived with someone as annoyingly, single-mindedly persistent as Sherlock for years without picking up a few tricks. Sherlock had talked him into enough schemes against his better judgment that John was certain he’d gotten the way of it.

He was going to out-Sherlock Sherlock.

At breakfast, he made one cup of tea instead of two. He sat across from Sherlock, who flashed him a quizzical look. John just smiled brightly and sipped his own tea. Sherlock’s brow crinkled like he was worried John had lost his mind.

“John, did you forget something?” Sherlock asked, sounding so hopeful and delicate that John had to suppress a snicker.

“Ah! You’re right. Forgot the milk,” John said, carrying his cup back into the kitchen looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

It turned out that acting like a self-involved prat was actually quite fun.

It took some doing, but John even managed to ditch Sherlock at a crime scene with Lestrade running interference. He’d told him the plan, and Greg had been only too happy to help.

As it turned out, there were as many people willing to get back at Sherlock with a few good-natured pranks as there were adoring clients with solved cases. Because the thing was, even if you loved Sherlock, even if you appreciated him, there were still times when you wanted to strangle him—something John knew all too well.

Lestrade called the cab because John had no doubt Sherlock would notice if he did it himself. Just as it arrived, he beckoned Sherlock over, “We found something you need to take a look at. There’s a bit of blood we missed earlier.”

“Where?” Sherlock asked.

“On the windowsill to the upstairs balcony.” John silently made a mental note not to play poker with Lestrade.

“That’s impossible. I would have seen it.”

“Yeah,” Lestrade scratched his head. “That’s what Anderson said too.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. He looked at John, and John was afraid he was caught out, but Sherlock followed Lestrade up the stairs, stomping and muttering the whole way.”

John waited until he heard those loud footsteps disappear onto the second floor of the apartment, and then he was off like a shot, running out the front door and into the waiting cab. The cab driver gave him an unimpressed look as John asked for 221B Baker Street, feeling like he’d just pulled off a heist.

In the end it took just under a week, which was longer than John thought Sherlock would last. The final straw was his old clarinet, which he’d gotten from his parents’ attic and taken to playing at odd hours of the night. The first time Sherlock came out of their bedroom looking bleary-eyed and disturbed, his hair pillow-matted and sticking up in all directions, John could have sworn he felt the kind of revelatory ecstasy that converted people to new and strange religions. Payback was sweet.

“If you’re going to play that thing, you can at least play it in tune! It sounds like you’re drowning a herd of cats.”

John shrugged, innocent. “You know what they say. Practice makes perfect.” He went back to playing for the length of time it took for Sherlock to cross the room and chuck the clarinet out the open window.

He did snicker then, and Sherlock shot him a murderous look before going back to bed and slamming the door behind him.

The next morning John had planned to continue his routine of drinking tea alone, in addition to experimenting to see how many times he could burn toast before Sherlock said something. He was betting 6, but after last night it could be as little as 3. He wondered if Sherlock might toss the toaster out the window too. He’d bought a spare.

Sherlock snapped on toast number 4. “Did you hit your head? Why are you acting like… like…”

“Like you?” John finished.

“Yes!”

“Christmas photo.”

“Oh for— This is about a bloody  _ Christmas photo _ ?”

“Yep.” John popped the  _ p _ .

“At a crime scene.” Sherlock demanded.

“No.”

“At the morgue.”

“No.”

“With the skull.”

John opened his mouth to turn it down again, but actually, that one wasn’t awful. “Fine, skull it is.”

“And you’ll go back to acting normal?” Sherlock asked, squinting at John.

“Well, I don’t know. Being you is really pretty enjoyable. I have to say, I see the appeal.”

“But one of us has to be nice to clients!” Sherlock exclaimed.

“Christmas photo and you keep  _ only food _ in the fridge for a month, and you have a deal.”

* * *

Their Christmas card read Season’s Greetings in tacky red font. Holly leaves that Sherlock had pronounced  _ ugly and inaccurate _ bordered the photo. In the picture itself, John was grinning and holding the mantelpiece skull in one hand, with the other arm slung around Sherlock’s shoulders. Sherlock was wearing an expression that looked like he was about to be shot.

John stuck it to the outside of the refrigerator that was blessedly free of body parts.


	13. Like hitching yourself to a falling star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John never takes Lestrade up on his offer for drinks, until one day he does. They talk about rugby, traffic, and Sherlock.
> 
> Prompt: Warm and cozy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can think of this as a short little follow-up to [Blinded by the Glare.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403570)

John had agreed to meet for drinks, and Greg was quite frankly a little shocked. John had consistently turned down his invitation to meet at the pub, an invitation that had been standing since… all that mess with Sherlock and Moriarty. The suicide. Well, “suicide” and everything that came after.

Greg still didn’t really believe they were going to have drinks, even as he was waiting in the pub. He half expected to be stood up, kept checking his phone for the last minute “can’t make it,” but this was John Watson, and Greg mostly figured he would be where he said he would. Even years spent with Sherlock hadn’t been able to wash the military precision off him. Worn down the edges, yes, but John was still an army man through and through.

He was already seated at a table when John came in. He stamped the snow off his shoes and hung his coat on a rack. John was looking better than he had in a long time. The limp that had marked his gait during Sherlock’s absence was gone, and even the new silver in his hair managed to look dignified rather than elderly.

He scanned the pub as he came in, and Greg raised his hand in greeting. In another moment John was pulling up a chair, and they were making their hellos.

“Did you want to sit at the bar instead?” Greg asked.

John shook his head. “This is fine.”

They lapsed into an awkward silence. Talking about the case they’d just closed seemed… well, odd. Not exactly pub talk, and although John might have been used to chatting about death in his off hours, Greg tried to leave it at the office. He didn’t share this pair’s apparent fascination with danger and death.

“Bit weird, isn’t it? Doing this without him.” John said, reading Greg’s mind.

“Yeah,” he allowed. “A bit.”

And it was. Without Sherlock in the mix, sucking up all the attention in the room like a black hole, they were just two blokes. Two blokes that barely knew each other, as it turned out.

John shrugged. “I’ve lived through worse than an awkward pint with a friend.”

Greg smiled. “So how about the game?”

“Expecting the Bears to win, thank you very much.” 

Greg groaned. “The Bears!”

The conversation settled into good-natured bickering, and John visibly relaxed. Greg felt himself unwind too. Feelings he was rubbish at. But this? Chatting about the game, about Greg’s ex-wife, and the awful state of traffic in London this time of year? Now that was something he was good at.

He was actually pleasantly surprised. John was a good bloke, he knew that, but that was generally where his knowledge of John started and ended: stand-up guy, veteran, strangely taken with Sherlock Holmes from the jump. It turned out John was also funny and a hell of a wingman. A woman came round to flirt with the doctor, and John managed to talk Greg up so well that she gave  _ him _ her phone number.

A few drinks in, he felt himself growing bold. Bolstered with beer and good company, he asked the question that was bothering him. “Forgive me if this is nosy, but why did you agree to drinks? Why today?”

John grinned. “Sherlock thought it would be a good idea.”

That took Greg aback. Sherlock always struck him as intensely possessive. He didn’t know what he and John got up to when they were alone, but for some reason he’d assumed it would preclude everything else. It certainly had for years.

There was a reason he barely knew John despite their being colleagues for nearly half a decade—because since he and Sherlock had met, Greg had rarely seen one without the other. And when they were together, they were so wrapped up in their own little world of two that the outside world hardly seemed to register unless there was a body or a crime involved, some risk to life and limb that the two knuckleheads seemed to find strangely irresistible.

Not that he expected Sherlock kept John locked up in the basement or anything (although truth be told, there were some Yarders who did), but it was strangely shocking that Sherlock would  _ encourage  _ John to form other friendships.

But then he thought of the broken man John had been after Sherlock’s faked suicide and how different that was to the hearty, hale man in front of him today.  _ That _ John had seemed to have a death wish, growing thin and gaunt and careless with himself.

So maybe not that shocking after all. Sherlock wanted John to have other connections to the world, to safeguard against that ever happening again. Not that he thought John would allow him to ever fake his own death again, nor that Sherlock would. But still, they were in a dangerous business.

Suddenly his esteem for Sherlock—as a man and not a detective—ratcheted a few notches higher.

He’d never asked John why he’d go back to Sherlock after everything. He hadn’t needed to. Sherlock may think he was an idiot, but you didn’t make Detective Inspector without being good at the job. Greg wasn’t any kind of super sleuth, and he certainly wasn’t a genius, but he was good with people. He could see plain as day that these two needed each other, but now he was  _ curious _ .

Greg had told himself he wouldn’t do this. The rest of the lot down at the Yard could have their betting pools, but he was determined to never get involved. It’d always seemed low. Maybe it was the drink going to his head, but suddenly he just had to know.

“So what’s it like?” He asked John. “Being with him, I mean. Not all warm and cozy, I imagine.”

He expected a reproving look from John, but none came. Instead a dopey, slow grin spread over his face. He scratched the back of his head. “No, not warm and cozy. It’s—” he hesitated.

“I’m sorry I asked,” Greg said, holding up his hands. Really, he was. He kicked himself for falling into the same trap everyone else did. He was better than that. “None of my business, yeah?”

“No. No, it’s fine,” John said. “Normal question between friends, innit? It’s just—I’ve never had to put words to it before. Not sure that I can, actually, but I can try.” John gazed into his beer as though it held the answers, gently swirling it in his glass. “He’s exactly like you’d think he would be, selfish and impossible as you could imagine. He doesn’t turn it off for me. I actually doubt that he could, and I wouldn’t want that anyway. But he’s also the kindest, most loyal person I’ve ever met, in his way. It’s like hitching yourself to a falling star.”

Greg’s face softened.

“It’s love, yeah?”

John smiled. “Yeah. It is. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Greg clinked their glasses together. “I’ll drink to that.”


	14. What's Offered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not all winners. Sometimes the end of a case is nothing to celebrate.
> 
> Prompt: Celebration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sex ~~drugs and rock 'n' roll~~ and violence

This case had been truly horrific, even by their standards. Their killer had kidnapped a 3 year old girl and subjected her to unspeakable horrors, leaving a trail of body parts for them to find like a grotesque version of  _ Where’s Waldo _ . They’d found him, in the end, but it had been an exhausting couple of weeks. And it was too late to save the girl.

By that point they were running on fumes and adrenaline. Caffeine had ceased doing anything to help, and everyone was snapping at each other at the crime scene. John was giving Sherlock a run for his money in the Olympic sport of Being Ill-tempered. And then they found it: the last and final clue.

John felt his stomach drop when Sherlock opened the music box and they found the girl’s heart tucked inside. It was so  _ small _ . After that, it was only a few minute’s work for Sherlock to find the body in a skip outside the building. The way the girl was disposed of, tossed into the rubbish like so much rotting meat, made John see red.

The seasoned cops among them looked green around the gills, and even Sherlock seemed shaken. Sherlock hung back along the edges of the crime scene, hands tucked into his coat pockets looking like a spectre. His face was partially hidden in the shadows of the room, but John could see the grim set of his jaw and the way his pale skin stood out starker than usual against the black of his hair and coat.

Seeing the tiny, mutilated corpse was too much. John felt the inescapable, rising urge to do violence to the person responsible. The man responsible was a small, reedy thing. He was the assistant manager of a local bookstore, soft-spoken with an air of timidity about him. John hadn’t punched him in the throat when they’d found him, but it was a near thing. He’d hit the wall beside him instead, punching it hard enough to crack the plaster.

“Get out of here,” Lestrade sighed, looking grey around the edges. “The last thing we need is to have to book you too. We can do statements tomorrow. Just get some rest.”

John nodded, stiff. It was just as well they’d been dismissed. He didn’t think he’d have been able to keep it together long enough to deal with Scotland Yard anyway. He turned to meet Sherlock, and they fell into stride together. Sherlock held the crime scene tape so John could duck under it.

It was a good couple miles back to Baker Street, but by unspoken agreement they decided to walk. The night was bracingly cold, and John was full of unspent energy. He felt jittery, and he was spoiling for a fight. The walk didn’t scratch the itch, not even close, but it was about a million times better than being cooped up in a cab right now.

For most of the way home, they didn’t talk. Sherlock seemed to have sunken into one of his taciturn moods, and for once John was happy to join him in a sulk of his own.

They got upstairs, and Sherlock was taking off his scarf when he asked, “Chinese?”

John shook his head. “Not hungry.”

“You usually like to conclude a successful case with a celebratory meal.”

John stared at Sherlock. He could hear himself raising his voice without quite meaning to. “Did that feel like a successful case to you?”

Sherlock frowned. “Well, yes. We found and apprehended the kidnapper.”

“The  _ murderer _ , Sherlock. Christ, he slaughtered a child. And not only did he murder her, the psychopath  _ tortured _ her to death. How can you just blithely sit back and suggest a meal to celebrate that?” He was shouting now, and if he didn’t keep it down, Mrs. Hudson was going to come up to see what all the fuss was about. None of that helped him get his temper under control.

Sherlock sniffed and said, “I hardly see how her death affects the outcome of our case one way or the other. We were commissioned to find a kidnapper, and we did.” 

John stared at him, dumbfounded. This wasn’t the Sherlock he knew. It was the Sherlock he’d known once upon a time, maybe—the one who had been positively gleeful at the prospect of bombs being strapped to unsuspecting Londoners, but it wasn’t the Sherlock he’d loved in the years since then. But then he caught the little wink Sherlock threw him, the gleam of mischief in his eye, and he knew.

Oh, this beautiful, brilliant man.

John wanted a fight, and Sherlock was serving one up on a silver platter.

Sherlock waited until John caught on to continue: “Really, your base sentimentality is embarrassing. I thought you were a soldier. Is that why they sent you home?”

Low blow. John felt his hands curling into fists. How far were they allowed to go?

Sherlock’s mouth curled into a sneer. “You’re going to hit me, is that it? Is that to make up for being too cowardly to hit the perpetrator you despised, to avenge the little girl you didn’t even know?”

But John heard what Sherlock was really saying underneath the jibing taunts.  _ Hit me. That’s how far we’re going _ .

He let the reins loose on his temper and swung. The feeling of his fist connecting with the side of Sherlock’s jaw was viscerally satisfying. He didn’t put all his force into the blow, but it was hard enough to knock Sherlock back and cause him to stumble. Sherlock looked momentarily stunned, a splotch of red blossoming on his cheek, but John wasn’t interested in an unfair fight. It wasn’t  _ fun _ that way. 

“What, you’re not going to hit me back? Now who’s the coward?”

Before John had even finished getting the words out, Sherlock reared forward, and a crack of pain bloomed across his face.

“ _ Ow _ , bloody hell. In the nose? Seriously? I avoided your fucking nose.”

“Your choice,” Sherlock grinned, and his teeth were limned in red. “No one said you had to.” 

John hit him again. “I’ll make you pay for that.”

Sherlock tackled John to the ground and pinned him. His hips were pressing against John’s, and he was definitely hard in his trousers. So was John, for that matter.

He pressed a forearm over John’s windpipe, slowly applying pressure to hear John wheeze. He cocked an eyebrow. “You were saying?”

John felt himself going lightheaded, though whether it was from the arm across his throat or all his blood rushing to his cock was anybody’s guess. Spots began to float in his vision. But although Sherlock was taller, John was the better grappler. He hooked a leg around and flipped them so he was on top, sitting astride Sherlock’s hips.

He pressed his hand over Sherlock’s nose and mouth, making sure to dig into the bruise he’d made earlier. “I said I’d make you pay for that.”

Unfortunately, he was still waiting for the black spots in his vision to clear, and Sherlock took the opportunity to  _ bite _ John. John yelped and yanked his hand away. That had definitely drawn blood. He slapped Sherlock hard enough to turn his head and pinned his arms, grinding his wrist bones against the wooden floor.

It was nothing like the bedroom games he’d played with ex-girlfriends or even Sherlock himself on occasion. This was vicious and sharp, all rough blows and bruised knuckles.

He bent his head to Sherlock’s neck and sucked, leaving a line of purple marks in his wake. Sherlock’s voice went high and thin, and his hips jerked up to buck against John’s. John bit down and worried the tendon in his teeth, and Sherlock thumped his head back against the floorboards in a way that sounded like it hurt.

“John,” he said. He couldn’t tell if Sherlock was bruised or blushing. The look on his face seem caught between arousal and anger.

John shifted his grip to pin both of Sherlock’s wrists with one hand, so he could reach down to undo Sherlock’s belt with the other. Keyed up with adrenaline, he yanked it open and shoved the trousers down over Sherlock’s hips, hard enough that Sherlock winced as the coarse fabric caught on his erection.

Sherlock jerked one of his hands free and reached down to unzip John’s fly and draw him out. The zipper teeth bit into the sensitive skin of his cock, and when Sherlock started pumping him dry and quick, it was pleasure blurred and gone bright with pain. His teeth were bared as he panted in quick gasps, and he wasn’t sure if the sounds he was making were  _ wait stop _ or  _ more more more _ .

They kissed with teeth mashing together. John tasted blood, and he wasn’t sure whose it was. Probably both. The wound to his nose was still leaking salty copper down the back of his throat, and when he spit into his hand to grab Sherlock’s cock, it was tinted red.

“End table,” Sherlock gasped, and John rolled away to reach up to the drawer in question. He found a half-full bottle of lube there and wasted no time slicking up his fingers and hauling Sherlock to his knees.

He wasn’t gentle in this either. This was just a different kind of fight. He pushed into Sherlock quick and unrelenting, barely stretching him open before adding another finger, and then another. The soft, desperate noises he was making sounded pained, but he kept pushing back onto John’s fingers, complicit in whatever this was.

John almost lost his nerve when Sherlock’s voice cracked on a particularly harsh thrust, and Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you dare stop.”

He did. He withdrew his fingers, and just as Sherlock opened his mouth to complain, John drove his cock in to the hilt. Sherlock’s words were lost an a startled groan, and John started fucking into him in earnest.

Sherlock clawed at his back, leaving welts that stung and burned and made him snap his hips harder. When he came, he buried his face in Sherlock’s neck, inhaling the familiar scent of him and letting it blot out all the horrors of the last few days.

They ended up on a heap on the living room floor, bruised and sated. John caught his breath, and his higher brain function returned—and with it, guilt.

“Feel better?” Sherlock asked.

“I don’t know,” John said honestly. He turned to look at Sherlock, wincing at the sting in his back as he did. He reached out to touch Sherlock’s split lip, running his thumb over the bruise that was rapidly forming on one of those ridiculous cheekbones. 

Sherlock shrugged him off. “I’m fine.” 

“That was… a bit not good, wasn’t it?”

Sherlock looked at him. “Who’s to decide that but us? This is not a gentle world. What does it matter what we do to function in it?”

John opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried it again. “I don’t want to hurt you, you know.”

“John,” He said, reproving. “There’s no shame in taking something I’m offering.”

Sherlock got up with a grimace, and John winced again. But Sherlock held out a hand to John and helped him up. He shrugged on his dressing gown and settled onto the couch with the book that had been sitting open there, facedown since the case had begun.

“Tea?” Sherlock asked hopefully.

John shook his head and put on the kettle, prodding at his tender nose. He hoped it wasn’t broken.


	15. Do It For Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock can't sleep. John helps.
> 
> Prompt: Silent night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hallelujah! I fixed the bizarre formatting issue I was having earlier.

Sherlock was acting odd, and that was saying something. Sherlock always acted odd, but this was strange even for him. It wasn’t until he couldn’t recall where he’d placed his Erlenmeyer flask full of God-knows-what-and-John-doesn’t-want-to-know (“Sherlock, you just set it down in the kitchen a half hour ago.”) that John became alarmed.

“Are you feeling alright?” he asked.

“Fine,” Sherlock snapped. “Leave me alone, I’m working.”

Sherlock had sent Mrs. Hudson down the stairs crying when she’d poked her head earlier, so John had no doubt his cutting tongue was in perfect working order, but he decided to push his luck anyway.

“Are you? Because it looks like you’re wearing a hole in our living room floor.” Something occurred to John suddenly. "Sherlock, when's the last time you slept?"  
  
"What day is it?" Sherlock asked without pausing his manic pacing.   
  
John frowned. "It's Tuesday."   
  
"Hmm. Friday, then."   
  
John looked up from his screen, startled. "You're going on 72 hours without sleep? You know that's how they torture people, right?"   
  
"Oh don't be dramatic. It’s not that bad."   
  
"Dramatic? Sherlock, you will literally go insane. You'll start to hallucinate shortly if you haven't already."   
  
Sherlock scoffed. "Weakness."   
  
"No, _biology_ . No matter what you think, you actually can’t defeat the limits of human biology through sheer force of will." A thought struck him. "You're not hallucinating now, right?"   
  
Sherlock made a noncommittal sound.   
  
" _Right?_ Sherlock?"   
  
"Of course I’m not," Sherlock snapped, but John was unconvinced. He went back to typing but kept an eye on Sherlock, looking for signs of delusion. Sherlock took the opportunity of John watching him to start making faces and sighing dramatically. John resolutely ignored him, but eventually the sounds of displeasure grew so loud that it was downright distracting.

“Problem?” John asked at last.

“Yes, that infernal racket,” Sherlock snapped. “You’re making it impossible to think.”  
  
"Mm, no. The severe sleep deprivation is making it hard to think. Hold on, racket?" His first thought was auditory hallucinations, then he realized Sherlock was referring to his typing. He snorted. " _This?_ This is racket to you? You're one to talk about racket."   
  
"My violin is a contribution to the world. Your blog is just noise. Virtual noise."   
  
John took a deep breath through his nose as Ella had taught him. _Sherlock is literally going insane due to sleep deprivation_ , he reminded himself. He would be the bigger man. He would not take the bait. He kept typing. He was planning on finishing this blog post and then spending the rest of the night indulging in crap telly. He was looking forward to it.

Then Sherlock lunged and made a grab for his laptop, and John bared his teeth and slammed it shut. "Alright, enough! You have a perfectly good bedroom. Why don't you go there if my typing is bothering you so much?"  
  
"I'm not tired," he said stubbornly.   
  
"Then lie in bed quietly until you get tired. Count sheep. I don’t care what you do, so long as you stop bothering me."   
  
"I'm not a child," Sherlock snapped.   
  
"Then stop acting like one!"

Sherlock wandered over to where John’s laptop was plugged in, and his hand closed around the plug. John’s laptop battery had given out a month ago, and he’d been too lazy to replace it. It would no longer function without being plugged into an outlet.

“You wouldn’t.” John said, eyes narrowing.

Sherlock very deliberately pulled the cord from the wall in slow motion, and John’s laptop screen went dark.  
  
John leaped up from his chair. "Fine. If you're going to act like a brat, I'll treat you like one."   
  
Sherlock's eyes glittered dangerously, "And what's that supposed to mean?"

“It means—” he trailed off. He actually hadn’t thought that far ahead.

He made a split-second decision and started taking off his belt.

“John?” Sherlock’s eyebrows snapped together.  
  
They didn’t _do_ this. In fact, John had no idea what _this_ was. Ah, well. In for a penny.   
  
"Take off your pyjama bottoms," he told Sherlock in his captain voice, the one that made corporals snap-to. The calm command belied the frisson of fear and anticipation snaking under his skin. This was mental.   
  
Sherlock froze. John could practically see his mind working, expressions flitting across his face. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision. With his eyes trained on John's, he slowly began to slip the elastic of his waistband over his hips. The eye contact made John feel dizzy, and he was glad when Sherlock broke it to pull his pyjamas the rest of the way off.

“Pants too,” John said. Sherlock hesitated, and for a second John was worried he’d gone too far, but after a moment he did as he was asked.

When he was done, Sherlock stood in the room bare from the waist down. John walked around him, and he could see goosebumps raised on Sherlock’s skin despite the warmth of the room.

“Hands on the dining room table,” John said, and Sherlock obeyed. John pushed the dressing gown off Sherlock’s shoulders and let it pool on the ground, then planted a firm hand on Sherlock’s back and pushed him down so he was bent at the hips.

“You’re not to take your hands off that table, do you understand me?” He asked. Sherlock was quiet but for his ragged breath. John fisted his hand in Sherlock’s curls and yanked his head back. “I said, do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Sherlock gritted out.

“Good.” John said and released him. “Now count for me. Ten should do it, don’t you think?”

He folded the belt over and struck it across Sherlock’s bare arse, hard enough to hurt.

“ _Oh_ ,” Sherlock said, arching his back as the belt hit him. “One.”

John did it again on the other side this time, and another soft moan escaped Sherlock. He did it again, then again, alternating blows between either side, making sure not to overlap.

“Four, five— _ah_ —six,”

On the seventh, he layered the strike over a spot that was already red and tender. Sherlock jolted, and his hands lifted from the table.

John gave one a light smack with his own hand. “What did I tell you?”

Sherlock’s hands flew back into place, gripping the edge of the table tight enough that they looked white at the knuckles.

Eight, nine, and ten came in quick succession. John was merciless, purposefully hitting the most sensitive areas.

When he was done, he set the belt carefully on the table. Sherlock stayed bent over still gripping the table. His breathing was ragged and loud in the silent room. Gently, John loosed his fingers and turned him around to look at him. Sherlock was unusually pliant. He let himself be led.

John caught his breath. Sherlock’s cock was hard, and it was glistening where it was leaking at the tip. He caught himself staring at it, suddenly painfully aware of his own cock trapped in his pants.

"I can't sleep, John," Sherlock said, and his voice sounded so forlorn that it pulled at John’s heart. "I can’t turn my brain off. There are too many problems to solve, too many things to learn. How can I sleep? How can _anyone_ ever sleep in a world like that? I’m exhausted, but I can't turn it off.”   
  
"What can I do?" John asked, rubbing small circles into Sherlock’s back. In for a penny. If he was allowed to beat his arse red, surely he could offer the comfort of physical touch.   
  
Sherlock drew in a shaky breath. "This is— this is good, I think. Don’t stop?"   
  
John inhaled sharply. "Okay," he said. "Okay, we can do that. I think— bed, though."   
  
Sherlock nodded and led the way to his bedroom. On a split second decision, John left the belt where it was. John flicked on the bedside lamp. The light was hardly conducive to sleep, but John selfishly wanted to see Sherlock. He wanted to watch him twitch and writhe, to see all those complicated emotions on his face while he made the hottest noises John had ever heard.

John sat on the bed. He left his pants on but adjusted himself so the pressure on his erection was less painful. Taking the hint, Sherlock draped himself over John’s lap, arranging himself so he was stable with his arse in the air.

“Okay?” he asked.

Sherlock nodded.

John rubbed a soothing hand over Sherlock’s buttocks where the pale skin was marked with cherry-colored stripes. He avoided the sorest parts and gave a quick massage, digging his thumbs into the deep muscles there. Sherlock sighed and went boneless as John worked.

When Sherlock was relaxed, at last he stilled his hand. “Ready?”

Sherlock nodded again.

John picked up where he’d left off, using his hand to spank Sherlock’s bare bottom.

This felt different. What happened in the kitchen could have been explained away. It was weird, sure, but everything they did was weird. What was a little corporal punishment between friends at 221B Baker Street? This, though. This felt intimate. John could feel Sherlock’s cock pressed up against his thigh, and even though his trousers it felt hot and heavy.

He rained blows on the tender skin there, picking spots at random so Sherlock couldn’t guess where he’d strike next. Sherlock moaned and writhed, hips jerking against John every time he was struck.

“You need this, don’t you?” John asked.

The question shocked another loud moan out of Sherlock.

John smacked him again. “Tell me.”

“I need this,” Sherlock panted. “God, I need this. More than cocaine, more than heroin.”

The mention of drugs gave John vertigo, made him feel suddenly ill. He spanked him until his hands were sore from it, as if he could blot the memory of addiction from Sherlock’s DNA if he could just hit hard enough, until all he remembered was John and nothing else.

The sounds coming from Sherlock’s mouth grew needy and soft, moans fading into whimpers. He wondered if he could make Sherlock cry if they did this long enough. Something dark twisted in him at the thought, and he suddenly wanted that more than anything.

"What else do you need?" John asked, his voice gone rough.  
  
"Let me come," Sherlock blurted out. The sentence hit John like a punch to the gut, and his cock jumped. God, he had to see him. He turned Sherlock’s face toward him with two fingers, and his cheeks were as red as his abused bum.

“Christ, you’re beautiful,” John said, and then Sherlock was coming with a muffled shout, biting into his fist as he spilled onto John’s lap.  


After, he fetched lotion from the bathroom and gingerly rubbed it into Sherlock’s abused skin.

“Sorry,” he said when Sherlock hissed at the feeling. “It’ll feel better tomorrow.”

He helped Sherlock into bed and tucked the covers around him, suddenly feeling painfully self-conscious. Sherlock’s eyelids were sliding shut, and he looked settled in a way he hadn’t earlier, all the frenetic energy burnt up. John turned out the light and got up to leave, but he felt Sherlock’s hand close around his in the dark.

“Will you stay?” Sherlock asked.

“Yeah,” John said. “Okay.”

He climbed into the bed and settled his arms around Sherlock, taking care not to jostle him. Sherlock pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth before falling asleep, just the barest brush of lips. John laid awake in the dark, and when he finally fell asleep, it was with a smile on his face.


	16. For the Holidays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John spend Christmas with the Holmes family for the first time since getting married. Visiting family for the holidays is always stressful.
> 
> Prompt: Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's early! I'm posting this one up in record time because I'm spending the evening with my own family before we fly back home tomorrow morning.

He and Sherlock had been married for five years now, and they had been busy for every single one of those Christmases. Spending the holidays with their families had never come up because there was always a kidnapping, an embezzlement, a murder. There was always something too important to let slide. If John hadn’t known better, he’d have thought that Sherlock organized the crimes himself, or more likely, sat on the most time-consuming cases until the holidays.

And yet this year there was nothing. Zip. Zilch. Absolutely nothing to do. Even Mrs. Hudson was away spending the week with her sister.

“Should we go visit your family?” John asked Sherlock, who made a face of such exaggerated horror that John laughed. “Christ, you’d have thought I just asked if I could saw off your arm.”

Sherlock brightened. “Oh, could we do that instead?”

John smacked him on the arm, and then Sherlock had poured himself into John’s lap with a devilish grin, and well. The conversation had ended there.

But John was persistent and when they were lying in bed still and tired much, much later, he brought it up again. “Why shouldn’t we spend Christmas with family?”

“Because it’s tedious,” Sherlock said. He curled around John and nipped at the soft skin of his neck. “I can think of _much_ more fun things to do if we stay here.”

John’s cock twitched, spent but trying to rise to the occasion, but he pushed Sherlock away gently. “Oh, no. That’s not working twice.” He pulled back to look Sherlock in the eyes. “I mean it, family is important. I think we should.”

Sherlock sighed and threw himself back onto the bed with a dramatic flop. “Fine.” He stabbed an accusatory finger at John. “But when you’re wearing an itchy sweater that makes you look ten pounds heavier, and you’re stuck looking at photos of the ‘02 line dance competition for two hours straight, remember that it was your idea.”

  
* * *

The strangest thing about Sherlock’s family was that they were very normal. He’d met them before, of course, at the wedding. Sherlock’s father had given him a firm handshake, and his mother had hugged him and cried, but the exchange had been brief. There’s been so much going on that day that he’d hardly remembered them. Now that he was in their living room, sitting on their couch and looking at incredibly _normal_ baby pictures of Sherlock, it felt like he’d fallen into some kind of alternate dimension.

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting of the Holmes family house. A cold, immense mansion, maybe. Skulls hanging from the walls, or at least a taxidermied animal or two. He was not expecting a quaint, cozy little cabin in the country. He wasn’t expecting to be fed sweetly decorated homemade sugar cookies until he felt vaguely stuffed with sweets.

Most of all, he couldn’t at all fathom how people this normal had made Sherlock and Mycroft.

Mycroft, who also made an appearance.

“John. Sherlock.” He greeted them when they arrived. He was sitting at the kitchen table looking stiff as usual, utterly out of place with the domestic, homey surroundings.

Judging by the way he was glaring at Sherlock, and Sherlock’s answering smirk, John would put money on Sherlock somehow having a hand in his attendance at Christmas dinner.

“Mycroft,” John said. “Happy Christmas.”

“Indeed. Although it would have been happier had I been able to make my flight to Antigua.”

Sherlock turned to John and said in a stage whisper, “He had a reservation on a private island off the coast of the Caribbean. I hear it’s an _unparalleled_ experience.”

Mycroft turned a sour glance on Sherlock. “It was difficult to get that invitation, you know.”

John blinked. “Did you blackmail Mycroft into coming for Christmas?”

Sherlock grinned and patted John’s shoulder. “Of course not. But do you know it’s amazing how quickly a few well-placed bomb threats can shut down an entire region’s airports?”

John gaped.

“Juvenile.” Mycroft sniffed.

“Sit! Sit, you two,” Mrs. Holmes fussed over them. “Dinner will be ready shortly.”

She seemed entirely nonplussed by her sons discussing bomb threats at the table, and John thought that maybe he could see the family resemblance after all.

  
* * * 

“Would you like some more eggnog, dear?” Mrs. Holmes asked after dinner.

“Yes, thank you.” John said, smiling and holding out his glass.

John was indeed subjected to a sweater hand-knit by Mrs. Holmes, red with ridiculous bobbles all over it, that he was too polite not to wear. “I heard you like jumpers, dear.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Holmes,” John said as he pulled it on (itchy, as promised), giving a big smile. Sherlock smirked at him across the table.

“You can call me mum, love. Oh, don’t you look _darling_?” Mrs. Holmes said, clapping her hands together. “Here, we need to take a photo.”

“Oh, I hardly think that’s necessary—” John started, but he was cut off.

“Nonsense, of course it is. Hang on, this is for Sherlock,” she said, producing another brightly wrapped parcel for her son.

His only consolation was that Sherlock received a matching sweater, and it was John’s turn to smirk.

“Well, put it on,” Mrs. Holmes said.

“This synthetic yarn is likely to give everyone a rash—” Sherlock started, and John kicked his shin under the table.

“Yes, Sherlock, it _is_ a lovely sweater. Why don’t you put it on?” he said, eyebrows raised. _Because I will make you regret it if you hurt your mum’s feelings on Christmas_ was the unspoken message.

Sherlock grumbled, but he pulled it on. The sleeves were slightly too long, but the deep red brought out the color in Sherlock’s face and made his skin look creamy and otherworldly as opposed to deathly pale. John hummed his approval. It was ridiculous that Sherlock could make even a lumpy sweater look good.

Mycroft’s mouth curled into a twist of sadistic glee until he was presented with a pullover of his own. Sherlock’s father pulled on his own sweater without a word, looking at his wife with a long-suffering affection.

It was nice. Sherlock’s family was _nice_. Even Mycroft was being more tolerable than usual. It was positively idyllic—family dinner at the table, drinks by the fire, charming family traditions and embarrassing childhood stories that had the brothers scowling and laughing in turns. It was a far cry from Christmases spent with his own family who were loud and argumentative. Between Harry’s drinking and his father’s temper, John had never spent a Christmas with his relatives that hadn’t devolved into some kind of feud.

Sherlock’s family wasn’t like that. John couldn’t fathom why Sherlock had been so loathe to come. Well, beyond the fact that he didn’t seem to voluntarily spend time with anyone besides John himself.

They wore the sweaters for the rest of the evening, itching at their skin in commiseration. There were photos proving it.

* * * 

Originally, the plan was to spend the night on Christmas Eve and then spend Christmas day together. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas. The roads were closed, and they ended up staying for almost a full week. The close quarters in an unfamiliar house began to chafe after the third day.

By the sixth day, John himself was ready for the trip to be over and done with. He found himself longing for their sitting room back at Baker Street in all its messy glory. He even began to miss the smell of chemicals mixed together for experiments of dubious scientific merit and the surprise body parts in the fridge.

Homesickness was a bitch.

But if John was uncomfortable and ready to head home, Sherlock was positively climbing out of his skin. For the first few days, he kept himself occupied answering emails and solving cases over the internet, but even that wore thin. It seemed that everyone in London was enjoying time off with their families—even criminals. The cases dried up, leaving Sherlock utterly, dangerously bored.

“What if I give Greg a call and ask if he's got any cold cases for you?” John asked while Sherlock was pacing and muttering to himself, eyeing the good china in a way that made John nervous for its safety.

“If you weren't an idiot, you'd realize that Mycroft was planning to take a sudden Caribbean holiday—cliche and uninspired by the way, _brother mine_ —because Grant went away and he wasn't invited. New relationship, perfect opportunity for a sex holiday but too soon to meet the parents. Graham's family rented a cabin in the mountains like they do every year, ergo no service and the reason Mycroft looks like he swallowed a lemon.” He frowned. “Well, I guess he always looks like that. You mind is so _common_ , John. You see, but you don't observe.”

John rolled his eyes. The sting of being called an idiot by Sherlock had worn off long ago. “I know for a fact you learned Greg’s name years ago. Look, why don’t you—”

He was not expecting Sherlock’s mum to get involved.

“Sherlock!” Mrs. Holmes snapped. “Is that any way to talk to the love of your life? You apologize right this instant.”

Well that was new. It was almost gratifying to have someone on his side for once. Usually when Sherlock got into a mood, there was no help for it. People tended to stay out of his way rather than risk his ire.

Sherlock looked chastened. “Sorry,” he muttered.

John smiled. “That’s alright. It’s been a long week, yeah?”

“Excuse my son,” Mrs. Holmes said with an apologetic smile. “He’s always been such a _difficult_ boy.”

“It’s been a long week,” John repeated diplomatically. “Travel and the holidays, it’s a lot. Could get to anyone.”

She favored him with a pitying look. “Yes, but we both know that’s not what it is. Sometimes he can be a bit… well, inhuman, isn’t that right?”

John looked to Sherlock, who was suddenly studying the carpet very intently. He felt a simmering anger starting to rise in him. Fuck it.

“Well hold on a second. Everyone has their moments. Lord knows that I’m no picnic either, and Sherlock puts up with me. He is a great man and a loving husband, and there’s not a damn thing wrong with him.”

Now everyone was staring at him. Even Mycroft had looked up from his laptop, eyebrows making a valiant attempt to reach his hairline. John took a deep breath.

“I’m going outside for some air,” he announced.

The screen door banged shut behind him, and John sat on the porch, wishing he’d thought to bring his coat. The cold air was bracing, and he breathed it in, letting it cool his lingering temper as he watched his breath fog.

He heard voices from the house, Sherlock’s deep baritone among them, but he couldn’t pick out the words. Sherlock joined him a few minutes later. He settled John’s coat around his shoulders, and sat close so their thighs were brushing. They looked out into the darkness together.

“I’m sorry for that.” John said at last. “For fighting with your mum.”

Sherlock laughed. “That? Oh, you passed with flying colors. Mummy adored you for that.”

“Sorry?” John asked. He didn’t follow.

“It’s the first Christmas together: clearly you want to make a good impression, which means you’re more likely to agree with her to keep the peace. She took the opportunity to apply pressure.” Sherlock reached out and gently rubbed the space between John’s brows where they were furrowed together. Then he kissed the spot. “She wanted to see if you’d join in and speak ill of me, or if you’d defend me, even from her.”

John shook his head. “Your family’s a bit spooky, you know that?”

Family resemblance indeed.

* * * 

John fell into bed on the last night with a sigh of exhaustion. Sherlock was already under the covers, staring intently at his phone.

“The roads look clear,” Sherlock said, looking up from his mobile. “We should be able to drive back tomorrow.”

“Thank God,” John said without opening his eyes.

Even without looking, he could practically _feel_ the “I told you so” on the tip of Sherlock’s tongue.

“Don't say it,” he warned.

Sherlock smirked. “I don't need to.”

“You knew it would be like this, didn’t you?” He thought on the way he had run out of clothing after their allotted two days, but Sherlock miraculously had not. He’d packed for this, of course. “You knew we’d be staying for a week.”

“Even I can’t predict the weather, but it was always likely we’d be staying longer than Christmas. You’ve met my family. If it wasn’t the weather, they’d doubtless have manufactured something.”

“So why did you agree to come?”

Sherlock shrugged. “You wanted to.”

“Yes, but you could have told me. If you’d explained, I would have understood.”

“And you’d have felt guilty the entire time, or else felt obligated to visit your own family, which would have been worse. We’ve been married for five years, it was bound to come up sooner or later. You value family and tradition. I value you.”

“Want to skip it next year?” John asked.

“Oh God, yes. Forever, preferably.”

“When we get back, I’m thinking Chinese, and we don’t leave the flat or speak to anyone for a week,” John said.

Sherlock hummed in agreement, and John propped himself up on an elbow to look at his husband.

“It _was_ good to spend time with your family. They’re lovely people. And they were pleased to see you.”

“Our family,” Sherlock corrected absently.

“What?”

“Our family,” Sherlock said again. “That’s the point of marriage, is it not? My family, your family…” He waved a hand. “Irrelevant distinction now.”

A slow, lazy grin spread over John’s face, and he laughed.

“What?” Sherlock asked, ready to be annoyed at being the butt of a joke he didn’t understand.

“Nothing,” John said, smoothing a hand over Sherlock’s face affectionately. “I just love you.” He kissed him. “I love you.”

Sherlock reached for him and ran a hand down his bare chest, down his stomach, then further still. John pulled Sherlock’s wandering hand away and pressed a kiss to its palm.

“Ah, no. Fucking you senseless in your childhood bed with your parents in the next room is where I draw that particular line.”

Sherlock pouted, and John took the opportunity to make a little mischief. “But wait until I get you home,” he whispered into Sherlock’s ear, tracing his tongue along the shell of it to see him shudder.


	17. Bit Not Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a New Year's party. Sherlock is trying very hard to be _good_ for John Watson.
> 
> Prompt: Hopes and fears

Sherlock wasn’t, strictly speaking,  _ good _ with people. He did know that. People rarely liked him, and the feeling was mutual. What friendships he had were due to others’ willingness to put up with his often unpleasant personality, not any social skills of his own.

That he had John Watson in his life, his work, his bed, that above all had very little to do with Sherlock’s interpersonal skills. It had much more to do with John being a marvel, one of a kind. 

And this year, John wanted to have a New Year’s Eve party. It had been a hard year all around. John’s father had passed away in April, and they hadn’t talked about it. John never talked about his father, but Sherlock could deduce— family history of alcoholism, anger management issues, lack of attendance at their wedding ( probably homophobic). John kept a stiff upper lip through the phone call, the funeral, the family visit, but Sherlock could see the hints of sadness all over him still, the strain of grief.

Sherlock didn’t like parties, didn’t like people unless they were bringing him a case or they were John, but John wanted a New Year’s party, and John was a marvel. So at 7pm, their friends started filtering in through the door to 221B.

“I’m surprised Greg came,” John whispered when he thought no one else could hear.

“Greg doesn’t want to be alone for the holidays since his wife left him. Again.”

John elbowed him. “Be nice.”

* * *

Sherlock was good at being charming in small doses. He knew what to say, what people liked. 

One could learn how to be personable by watching people, and he’d figured it out in uni. 

It was like a game: If A, then B. If someone compliments you, then you say thank you and return a second compliment (addendum: ensure the compliment is unique enough to sound spontaneous and therefore genuine). If someone mentions a pet, then ask for details because people enjoy excuses to talk about themselves, even by proxy.

Theoretically, if he took the time to categorize human interaction, he could make hundreds of rules for every situation and be a perfect facsimile of a sociable, amiable man. It’s just that it was tiring to carry off the act for any length of time, and it took so much effort that it left him feeling irritable and dull. Not to mention such a catalogue of social pleasantries would crowd the walls of his mind palace.

In compromise, Sherlock had memorized dozens of those rules. It was enough to get him into the occasional locked flat, out of trouble, and past the defenses of suspicious witnesses. Enough to get by, to allow him a coterie of friends and work he enjoyed. For the evening and the sake of John Watson, Sherlock now turned his manufactured people skills, such as they were, on their friends and colleagues.

Lestrade was playing bartender in their kitchen. He’d wrinkled his nose at the collection of pig livers in the fridge and asked, “Is that human? Wait, wait, I don’t want to know.”  _ Irritating _ .

“Beer? Wine?” Lestrade asked once he’d set up to his liking.

“Ah, beer for me, ta.” John said.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s eyes skittered over the wine bottles: red, not the optimal temperature, but he’d picked it himself, and it was a good vintage. He preferred wine. But, roomful of cops: beer was the more popular option. Wine would ostracize, beer would give the illusion of commonality. 

“Beer is fine,” Sherlock said, and then, trying to  _ be nice _ . “Thanks.” He smiled the normal one that people liked. 

* * *

He had managed for most of the party, but now he was tired. As the night wore on and midnight approached, they’d all switched to champagne by popular decree. The drink was going to his head, making it feel sluggish and cloudy. He preferred not to drink, but social drinking was personable. It set people at ease. 

He tried to remember how many times John had refilled his champagne. He thought about the blood smudged onto various textiles in the kitchen and hoped no one had spilled anything on them. He was categorizing the rate of oxidation over time on different fabrics. He wanted to be there to take another reading. 

And then they were calling everyone together into the sitting room to play some god-awful game.

It was Molly’s idea. “Let’s all go ‘round and say what we hope for in the New Year.”

Sherlock scoffed. “Maudlin.”

Molly’s smile wavered.

“Don’t be an arse,” John said without much heat.

Sherlock frowned. He wasn’t, or he thought he wasn’t. Must have got it wrong.

“I’ll start, yeah?” Molly said in a bright voice. People nodded where they were seated on the couch. “I hope to find love this year.”

“That’s lovely.” Mrs. Hudson said, patting her hand. “You know, I think I was just about your age when I met my late husband. I think this will be your year.”

“Unlikely unless Molly recalibrates her taste in men,” Sherlock said.

Molly’s smile fell off her face. 

“Oh, Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Don’t be that way.”

Wrong again, then. He’d thought they’d all been saying things about Molly’s wish. His had just been  _ true _ .

John cleared his throat. “I think it’s Mrs. Hudson’s turn next.”

“I hope to do some travel this year,” she said.

“Where to?” Donovan asked from her perch on the opposite couch.

“Oh, I was thinking Dublin. I have a friend lives out that way, and I hear it’s lovely in spring—”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. Banal, predictable. It was like nails on a chalkboard. He jiggled his foot trying to distract himself from the mounting annoyance in his brain, the pressure under his skin. He wanted his blood samples from the kitchen.

“Can we speed this along?” He said at last. He gestured to each person in turn. “Donovan hopes she’ll get the promotion that isn’t forthcoming—sorry, Sally, not in the cards this year. Anderson hopes he’ll be able to get a leg over by the end of the night. Stunningly high ambitions we should all hope to emulate! Greg hopes his wife will come home and finally stop cheating on him. She probably won’t, but I suppose one can—”

“Oy!”

“Watch it, freak!”

“Sherlock!”

A chorus of angry cries went up around the room. 

“But everyone is just humoring Molly,” Sherlock said. “No one is enjoying this, and everyone is bored.”

Molly looked hurt again.

“I’m not!” Greg rushed to reassure her.

“I’m having a lovely time, dear.” Mrs. Hudson agreed. “It was a good idea.”

So they were expected to go around the room listening to everyone tell lies about themselves, then. In this context, saying what everyone was thinking was not good. Sherlock had a headache. It was always so hard to  _ tell _ .

“Uh, I’ll go next,” John said, trying to buoy the room up again. He raised his champagne flute. “I hope for another good year with you all. To good health, love, and happiness.”

Sally raised a hand. “Can I have a turn, or did Sherlock take mine? I hope this fucking weird party ends soon.”

It was Sherlock’s turn next, but no one found out what he hoped for because he’d fled the room.

* * *

Sherlock made himself scarce for the rest of the evening. He went up into their shared bedroom. Years ago they’d both moved into John’s room because he preferred the security of the top floor, but tonight Sherlock was grateful that it was the bedroom furthest from the party. He didn’t turn on the lamp, preferring instead the cool darkness against his skin. The quiet room was soothing after the noise downstairs.

He wasn’t hiding.

He could still hear the dull roar of people talking beneath the floorboards. Someone laughing, a glass breaking. A feeling that reminded him of his youth curdled in his belly, sour and full of an ashen disappointment.  _ Stupid. _

Downstairs, their flat was full of perfectly ordinary, dull people with common minds that could figure out something that he could not. It came so easily to them.  _ Not fair _ , a familiar small voice said.  _ They’re together having fun, and you  _ are _ hiding because you’re too feral for polite company. Even your best still isn’t good enough _ . 

He tamped it down. He’d had too much to drink. His hands itched for the violin that was still in the sitting room, and another current of shame lapped at him as he realized he didn’t have the will to go get it.

It wasn’t more than half an hour later when John joined him. He was sitting on the bed looking out the window, and he didn’t need to look to see who it was.

“Don’t turn on the light,” Sherlock said softly as the door creaked open.

John obliged, shutting the door so the only light was what filtered in from the streetlamps below.

“Hey,” he said, wrapping his arms around Sherlock’s waist from behind. “Where’d you go?”

“I didn’t want to ruin your party,” Sherlock said lightly.

“Hey, no.” John moved in front of Sherlock and put a hand to his cheek. “Why would you say that?”

Sherlock shrugged, and John couldn’t see it. “Because I do ruin things like that. Parties, friendships, weddings.” He made a face. “Anything that requires a human touch.”

“You couldn’t ruin anything if you tried, love.”

Sherlock chuckled, feeling his black mood grow a little lighter. “I think the wall downstairs would disagree.”

“That was redecorating,” John suggested. “You couldn’t ruin anything important.”

John wrapped his arms around Sherlock, and they sat in the dark for longer than was probably wise. Sherlock pressed his nose into the crook of John’s neck and breathed deep, letting himself be soothed by the familiar scent.

What Sherlock wanted was to hold onto John and never let him leave. Instead he said, “You should go back. People will wonder where you’ve gone.”

John gave Sherlock one last squeeze before pulling away. “I rather like it up here. Think I’ll stay. Give me a minute, and I’ll get everyone out of here, okay?”

Sherlock furrowed his brow. “It’s not even midnight. That’s the point of a New Year’s Eve party.”

“Sod the party.”

“But it’s what you wanted.”

“I wanted a party because I thought it’d be fun to spend the new year with all our friends. But that wasn’t fun for you, was it?”

Sherlock sighed. “No. But I wanted you to have a good time.”

John pressed a kiss to his mouth, soft and lingering. In the dark, there was nothing to focus on besides the slide of lips and light scratch of stubble. John teased him with his tongue before pulling back and leaving him panting, and when the doctor spoke, he could  _ hear _ the smile in his voice. “Anywhere I’m with you is a good time.”


	18. Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has their vices. Some people have food, others have drink. Sherlock has John Watson. 
> 
> Prompt: Feast

Sherlock usually didn't indulge in food or drink. Not that he was an ascetic, far from it. He was instead a connoisseur of vices. He picked them carefully. Above all, his chief indulge was John Watson.

John wasn’t a particularly handsome man, objectively speaking. He was on the shorter side, with graying hair and a limp that still came on in times of stress. He had a quick temper, and while he was more intelligent than the average man, he still didn’t grasp much of what Sherlock himself did.

And yet he was absolutely  _ necessary _ for life. It was a phenomenon that Sherlock didn’t understand but had come to accept, even revel in.

John Watson was a feast, and Sherlock wanted to devour him. He wanted to consume him, to take everything of him for himself, leaving nothing out. His pain, pleasure, anger, joy, Sherlock wanted all of it. To soak him in and subsume him.

He couldn’t do that, of course he couldn’t. That was mad and  _ a bit not good _ , as John would say. But in sex he could unwind John, strip him bare and take all of him.

Some nights their coupling was fast and frantic, teeth clacking and fingers gripping hard enough to bruise. There were whole nights of pinching, biting, hitting, pushing to see just how far they could go. 

Their lives were dangerous. There were so many things that hurt them on a regular basis—leaving abrasions, bruises, bullet wounds—that sometimes it was a joy to beat the world to the punch. To leave the scars themselves.  _ Mine to hurt, and mine to heal. _

They had cut, drowned, beaten, and burned each other. It was a thrill to find out how far John would let him go, to see that beloved face telegraphing everything as blood welled up and skin split beneath his hands. To watch John take it and ask for more. He shivered. He would never tire of it.

But then there were other nights.

There were nights when he took John apart slowly, with teeth and lips and tongue to watch him beg. Sherlock liked to catalogue the minute differences between the way his face contorted in pain or in pleasure. A twitch here, the set of jaw there. Gentleness could be agony, and he liked the way the screams all sounded the same.

Tonight he wanted to feast.

John was barely in the door before Sherlock had him crowded up against the wall, pressing his hands on either side of his face to plunder his mouth.

“Christ, what’s gotten into you?” John asked.

“You,” Sherlock said.

He got John naked and on his back. He wrenched his legs open and devoured him, nosing along the cleft of his arse and lapping like a starving dog. John groaned and spread his thighs wider.

“Sherlock, god yes,” he gasped, and oh, it was  _ music _ .

He licked and teased, sliding his tongue in and around, fucking John with it. John, who made the most desperate sounds. Sherlock ground his face into him, driving John wild with the brush of stubble rasping against sensitive skin.

“I want to ruin you,” Sherlock said. “I want to crack you open and see what’s inside.”

John moaned loud and long, and Sherlock loved this man who spoke his language.

He dragged it out, licking and sucking until John’s muscles tensed and he was breathing hard and heavy. He dragged John right up to the edge before pulling away with a chaste kiss.

“Don’t stop,” John begged.

“Shhh.” 

He waited until John cooled down and grew quiet and soft before starting again. And again. And again. He adored the lines of tension that suffused his body, loved watching him go desperate and incoherent.

“ _ Please _ ,” John begged. He was so beautiful when he begged. “Please, please, anything. I need— I  _ need _ , Sherlock, let me.”

“You’re mine,” Sherlock said, fingers stilled inside him. “Mine and mine and mine.”

“Yours,” John sobbed. “Always yours, Christ,  _ please _ , let me—”

He twisted his fingers, and John shouted.


	19. The Bunny King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somnophilia and rabbits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly don't even know how to do content warnings for these things anymore. It's _me_ , guys. You know how I get. It's exactly what it says on the tin, and it is definitely NSFW.

Sherlock hadn't slept in so long that he was setting his own personal record. No matter what they tried, nothing helped Sherlock power down the engine that was his brain. Once his hands started shaking and he started losing his train of thought mid-sentence, staring off into the middle distance for a worryingly long time, John grew concerned enough to suggest pharmaceutical intervention. Sherlock must have been feeling like hell because he agreed without argument, sticking out his tongue to accept it when John produced a little pink pill.

From then on, that was their unspoken arrangement. Whenever Sherlock had gone without sleeping for more than two days, he went to John for help. As much as Sherlock disliked the idea of sleeping pills—and John knew from experience that Ambien could make a person groggy the next day—by and large even Sherlock had to admit that the minor reduction in brain function was better than the alternative of hallucinating and being totally out of commission for days when he finally crashed.

It was rare enough that Sherlock couldn’t sleep at all. He usually got at least a few hours, even if he went to bed after John and woke up long before him most mornings. Still, over the years it had happened more than a few times, and of course they had  _ experimented _ before. It turned out Sherlock wasn't opposed to being fucked in his sleep, and John found something darkly thrilling about it as well.

Tonight was one of those nights when Sherlock couldn’t sleep until John helped. He’d taken a pill and gone down a couple of hours ago. John was still a light sleeper, even after years out of the army, and he always woke first when Sherlock had a nightmare; tonight was one of those nights too. Sherlock was twitching and moaning beside him, twisting to get away from some unseen assailant. John’s arm hovered, poised to shake Sherlock awake, when he heard it:

“No,” Sherlock moaned. “Not the bunnies.”

John froze.

“Bunnies?” he asked.

Sherlock shivered. “They’re  _ giant _ . The— the bunnies. Fangs. John,  _ fangs _ .”

John snickered, no longer on high alert. Just a garden variety nightmare, then, not a recollection of some real horror clinging on still. That was a rarity for them, and a welcome one. Inspiration struck. Oh, he could have some fun with this.

He reached over the side of the bed and rooted around trying to find it— they had been rather enthusiastic last night, and their clothes had ended up scattered all around the floor.  _ Ah _ , there it was. John was in luck; Sherlock’s scarf had landed within arm’s reach. He was afraid he’d wake Sherlock if he got up from the bed.

He shifted his weight slowly, slowly and stretched his arm out to its full length, catching the woolen scarf with the very tips of his fingers. He pulled it up just as slowly, moving carefully to avoid waking his husband. His husband, who was still being attacked by phantom furry assailants in his sleep, presumably.

He rubbed the scarf along Sherlock’s face, feather-light. He dragged it along the strip of skin exposed at Sherlock’s midriff, where his shirt had ridden up during the night. “The bunnies are coming, Sherlock,” he whispered.

Sherlock jerked. “Bunny king,” he muttered.

John could work with that. He slipped his hand beneath the waistband of Sherlock’s pyjama bottoms.

“The bunny king is coming to have his way with you,” John whispered into Sherlock’s ear before chomping at his neck in what he hoped was a rabbit-like fashion. “He thinks you’re very pretty, and he wants to have you all to himself.” He dipped his hand lower to wrap it around the sleeping detective’s cock as he spoke, and Sherlock moaned “No,” while simultaneously pushing up into John’s fist.

The effect was strangely charming.

He stroked his hand lightly over Sherlock's rapidly-hardening cock. “Tell me about the bunny king, Sherlock,” he whispered.

“B-big,” Sherlock moaned. “So many teeth.” He frowned in consternation. “ _ Purple _ .”

John's eyebrows shot up, and he stilled his hand for a moment.  _ Purple? _ He mouthed to himself.

No matter. John gently started working Sherlock's pyjama bottoms over his hips. “Lift up for the bunny king, Sherlock, or he’ll be very cross with you.”

Sherlock muttered something unintelligible and shifted slightly. “Come on. Up, love,” John coaxed, and Sherlock lifted his hips—uncoordinated and slow, but enough so that John could get his pyjamas the rest of the way off. He quickly shucked his own and settled back between Sherlock’s legs.

John took a moment just to admire him. He was soft in sleep, unabashed, with none of the thorniness or armor present in his waking life. And right now he was muttering nonsense about a rabbit king, and John was having fun.

“The bunny king thinks you look delicious,” John told Sherlock as he licked his cheek. “He wants to taste you, but if you’re very, very good he won’t eat you up with his big teeth.”

Sherlock whimpered.

“Do you think you can be good?”

John didn’t wait for an answer. He swallowed Sherlock’s cock all the way to the base, and Sherlock bucked up into his mouth with a gasp. John sucked him sloppy and slow, moaning at the sight of his sleeping husband rutting into his mouth. He wrapped his hand around his own leaking prick, giving it a few hard tugs.

He pulled off to reach for the bottle of lube on the nightstand, and Sherlock whined. 

“Shh, it’s okay, love.” John slicked his fingers and trailed them between Sherlock’s thighs, then lower to play with his entrance, brushing his fingers over it. He pushed, and his finger slid in easily. “You’re so open for me,” John told him, dragging his finger in and out. “It’s like you were made for this.”

He slipped in another finger and gently scissored them, opening Sherlock up. He twisted his fingers to brush against a spot that made Sherlock twitch and shake. He was breathing fast now, not from a nightmare but because of John. He’d wake up soon, but John wanted to be inside him first.

“Hang on,” John said, slicking himself. “I want you to wake with my cock in you, stuffed so full you can’t even breathe.

He lined himself up and pushed forward, taking it torturously slow, watching the length of him disappear into Sherlock’s body. It was still a marvel every time.

Sherlock’s eyes opened, and John had the pleasure of watching him gradually realize where he was and where John was. John cherished the sweet, muzzy confusion on his face. He loved watching Sherlock wake up so sweetly overwhelmed.

“Hello, your majesty,” Sherlock breathed when his eyes finally focused, voice husky with sleep.

John grinned and rocked into him, coaxing a moan from the detective. “Hello, yourself.” He punctuated each word with another gentle roll of his hips. “Are you close?”

Sherlock’s eyes slid closed again. The blurriness of sleep was still clinging to him, threatening to suck him under once more. “Yes,” he sighed.

John pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Good.”

He angled his thrusts the way he knew Sherlock loved, dragging soft, breathy moans from him. “John, John, John,” Sherlock chanted.

“I’ve got you,” John said, reaching down to take hold of him. A few pulls, and Sherlock was tipping over into orgasm. John followed shortly after, and Sherlock kissed him through it. It was messy and uncoordinated, tongues sliding lazily past one another while John moaned into his mouth.

At last, John settled back into the bed and Sherlock immediately nuzzled into his side. He rarely liked to cuddle, but these nights were the exception. They could deal with the mess in the morning.

“Love you,” John said, and Sherlock snored in reply.


	20. Peace and Torment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I found peace in your violence._
> 
> Prompt: Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats to all you wonderful writers who finished the 2018 Advent Ficlet Challenge today! You all kick so much ass!
> 
> However, I started 4 days late, so I still have 4 ficlets to go! Stick around and I'll finish this up by New Year's. :D

**I. Torment**

Stillness was not the same as peace. They could look the same from the outside, but one was a roiling maelstrom beneath the surface while the other was placid through and through—as above, so below.

For Sherlock Holmes, idleness was the enemy of peace. When he was still, when there was nothing on, his brain began to play games of its own, and a brain like his could invent the most terrible games. Games like  _ let’s remember every malicious thing anyone has ever said about you _ and  _ let’s think of what John would look like cracked open and bleeding out _ .

He was so  _ good _ at those games, and the prize was catatonia and depression, so Sherlock did his best to never sit still.

When he was still, the remarkable machine that was his brain turned in on itself like a rabid dog. Even sleeping was sometimes intolerable, the minutes between waking and oblivion stretching out like tiny tormentors to bite at his heels. 

But idleness was sometimes inevitable.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and nothing was on. There was no work to be done, no cases to solve. John was home from the clinic, puttering around the flat. When he walked by Sherlock, he smiled and pressed a kiss to his forehead. It was idyllic.

It was torture.

Everything bothered him. The dust motes swirling across the floor irritated him. The sun streaming prettily through the curtains irritated him. The silk of his dressing gown brushing against his skin irritated him. 

John brought him tea because he was in a strop, and that’s what John did.

The kindness irritated him.

He was being unfair, even  _ he _ knew that, but that didn’t make him stop. He bit the hand that fed him because the train had no brakes. The engine wouldn’t yield.

 

**II. Peace**

It was freezing, pouring rain, and they were trying to clamber over a fence in the dead of night. Sherlock couldn’t feel his toes, he’d taken a knock to the head, and they were being shot at. It was an objectively terrible night.

It was wonderful.

“Sherlock, help me up!” John grit out between chattering teeth.

Sherlock obliged, reaching down so he could clasp John around the forearm. He hoisted him up, his grip slipping as the soggy wool of John’s jumper stretched in his hand.

He pulled John over, but just barely. The chainlink was slippery, and he lost his footing. They fell. John landed on Sherlock and knocked the wind from his lungs, knees digging into soft tissue in a way that would surely bruise—souvenirs _. _ John yanked him to his feet, and they took off at a run. 

The sound of their pursuers scaling the fence followed them down the alley. A bullet whizzed by Sherlock’s ear, and his heart pounded faster. Cortisol, adrenaline. John’s grin as their eyes met, just for a split second, before their attention was back on the chase.

_ Beautiful _ .

The midst of the game was when Sherlock felt most at peace.


	21. Tradition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John starts a new holiday tradition. 
> 
> Prompt: Holiday decor

The house looked normal enough from the outside, if you ignored all the police tape. It was cheerily decorated with multicolored lights. There was even a rather charming wreath on the door.

John didn’t have much time to take it in because no sooner had they hopped out of the cab than they were being briefed. Lestrade quickly brought them up to speed on the case and what the police had found so far. Apparent murder, woman named Edie Allerton who lived alone, neighbors had heard screaming.

The cops outside looked disgruntled and stayed well out of their way. Even Sally held her tongue and avoided nettling Sherlock for once. The sooner they could investigate, the sooner everyone could go home. It was Christmas, and no one wanted to be there.

“It’s a weird one,” Sally had told him as they walked past on their way into the house. She jerked her head in Sherlock’s direction. “ _He’ll_ love it.”

Weird indeed.

Edie Allerton was dead. That was—well, unfortunate, but normal enough. What was bizarre was the sheer number of things in her house. She had a _lot_ of Christmas decorations, so much that moving around her small house was uncomfortable. There were rows of Santa Claus peering down at him from shelves lining the living room.

“It looks like an episode of _Hoarders_ ,” John muttered.

The actual crime scene was worse. Her bedroom was stuffed with so many holiday knick-knacks that her body hadn’t even had room to fall to the floor. Her head was bent at a grotesque angle where it had slammed into a nativity scene, and blood was decorating a tableau of reindeer, making them look demented and carnivorous.

“I don’t think that’s quite what they meant by Rudolf the rednosed reindeer,” John said.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He forgot that Sherlock didn’t do pop culture references.

Sherlock bent down to inspect the body. “Strangled,” he said. He pulled a thin bit of shiny metallic plastic from beneath her collar. “Strangled with _tinsel_ ,” he amended.

He stood and followed the trail of blood across the room.

“She was stabbed here,” Sherlock said, indicating a spot by the window. “She used the fake snow to try to staunch the bleeding.” As advertised, there was a pile of raggedy cotton soaked through with red “Her attacker left her alone momentarily before coming back to finish the job.”

John shook his head. This was the weirdest way he’d ever spent Christmas, and that was saying something. He’d lived with Sherlock for years; there had been some weird Christmases in his time. He shifted from foot to foot, checked his watch. He looked around for the Met officers who’d accompanied them, but they were outside, probably so they didn’t have to wait in here, not that there was much standing room anyway.

Sherlock looked up, squinting at John. “Why are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Fidgeting. You don’t usually fidget.”

John dragged a hand over his face, looking back to the gore-spattered holiday decor without really meaning to and instantly regretting it. “It’s a bit creepy, isn’t it?”

Sherlock frowned. “You don’t usually find crime scenes ‘creepy’.”

“Well they’re not usually a blood-soaked rendition of a holiday special, yeah?”

“What?”

John sighed. “It’s Christmas. It’s supposed to be wholesome. Cheery.” He toed at the broken baby Jesus figurine. “This might have actually ruined holiday decorations forever.”

“Really?” Sherlock actually sounded surprised.

John’s eyebrows shot up. “This doesn’t disturb you? Not even a little?”

“I actually thought it was an improvement.” There was a wistfulness to Sherlock’s voice before he shook it off and started rattling off deductions once more.

 

That wistful admission, and what happened next, were the reasons that John was pretty sure he had finally lost his mind.

He waited until Sherlock went to bed. The detective often had a hard time falling asleep, but the night after a case was always the exception. Sherlock shot John a questioning look when he announced he was going to stay up for a while more, but nothing came of it. Sherlock just off a case was exhausted enough not to bother himself with more domestic concerns.

Which gave John the opportunity to carry out his plan.

He rummaged around in his closet until he found the mostly-full bottle of fake blood he’d used for his costume for Greg’s fancy dress party last Halloween.

John had decorated for Christmas, more for the sake of tradition than anything. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a Christmas tree and twinkling lights strung up round the flat and—in a fit of inspiration—a tasselled Santa hat for the skull on the mantle. John appreciated the festive aesthetics of it, and Sherlock had been tolerant but unmoved.

Now he uncapped the bottle of blood and poured it over all the carefully hung decorations. He doused the tree, starting from the star sitting at the top and letting it run down the boughs. The white lights shone red where the blood dripped over them. He made bloody handprints on the presents beneath the tree. He even went outside and bloodied the wreath hanging from their door, although Mrs. Hudson might kill him for it.

He couldn’t wait for Sherlock to wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Especially now that this is winding down, I feel that I should mention I keep a blog-ish thing at Dreamwidth. Mostly I talk about my writing process, so if you're curious about how these ficlets come about, that's a good way to find out! I also talk about my life a bit and get chatty.
> 
> [lovetincture.dreamwidth.org](http://lovetincture.dreamwidth.org), for the interested.


	22. Stars by M.C. Escher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gives Sherlock the worst birthday present ever. 
> 
> Prompt: Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the missed day yesterday, guys! Life stuff needed my attention, but now I'm back to finish this thing up. :)

It was Sherlock’s birthday, and John had no idea what to get him. He was notoriously difficult to shop for, and although John knew he didn’t mind not getting gifts—John hadn’t even known when his birthday _was_ for most of the time they’d known each other, not until he’d done some sleuthing of his own and figured it out— _John_ minded.

There were two things he wanted: to get Sherlock the perfect gift, and for it to be a surprise. They were both equally improbable, but John could try. For weeks, he kept his eyes out for the right gift every time he went into a store. He’d even taken special pains to go out shopping in ways that hopefully Sherlock wouldn’t catch on to, giving up his lunch break to try to be sneaky about it.

Online shopping was right out since Sherlock still didn’t see the difference between using his computer and using John’s.

(“We’re married; isn’t the point that what’s yours is mine, et cetera?”  
“You were using my laptop before we were married,” John pointed out.  
Sherlock shrugged and went back to tapping away at John’s computer. “Yours was closer.”)  


It had been a month. A whole month of looking for a birthday present, and John was just about to give up and get him a gift card when he saw _it_. It was a book of M.C. Escher drawings, the kind that John vaguely remembered seeing in posters in his high school math class. He was instantly drawn to it and picked it up, paging through it with head cocked.

He landed on a print of two chameleons in a geometric device that seemed to twist in on itself forever. The prints were strange and surreal in a way that reminded him of Sherlock himself. With a little smile, he paid for the book and took it home, secreted away in the inner pocket of his jacket. Sherlock would know he had _something_ , but no matter.

Sure enough, no sooner had he gotten through the door to their flat than Sherlock was squinting at him. “What have you got beneath your coat?”

“Nothing,” John said, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “Liar,” He said, but he left it alone.

* * *

The actual gifting went off without a hitch. He brought Sherlock a cupcake from the cafe downstairs, and Sherlock accepted both it and the wrapped present with considerable good grace. The years had softened his manners to the point that he even said, “Thank you.”

Sherlock ripped the paper off the book, and his smile did something odd. It froze halfway on his face. Slipped. Fell.

“What’s this?” he asked, peering at it.

Huh? It said so right on the cover, _The Magic of M.C. Escher_. “It’s a book of drawings,” John said, gently taking the book and flipping through it for Sherlock’s benefit. He fanned out the pages so Sherlock could see. “He’s a famous artist known for his optical illusions.”

Sherlock’s frown deepened as he took the book from John. He stabbed at one of the pictures. “But it doesn’t make any sense.”

John scratched the back of his head. “Well, yeah. That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s why they’re optical illusions.”

Sherlock flipped the book open to a particular page, a depiction of stairs going in all directions with people walking on them, some rightside up and some upside down. “No, John,” he said with more urgency, as if John didn’t understand. “It doesn’t make _sense_.”

Sherlock was staring at the book with an intensity that was starting to make him uneasy, so he gently worked the book free from Sherlock’s hands (although he had to pry at his fingers, a bit, to get him to let go). He set the book to the side.

“Hey, you still have cake, yeah? I bought candles. Do you know where the matches are?”

The matches were, as it turned out, inside the refrigerator.

(“Why would I know they were inside the refrigerator?”  
“I don’t know, Sherlock, because you put them there?”  
“Hard drive, John. Useful data only.”)

Finally, John lit the candle, Sherlock blew it out, and he even had a bit of cake. They fell asleep naked, sated, and curled together, and John forgot about Sherlock’s frankly unsettling reaction to the book.

That should have been the end of it, except that it wasn’t. Not when John woke up in the middle of the night to find Sherlock’s side of the bed empty. That wasn’t strange in and of itself. Although Sherlock’s sleep schedule had normalized over the years—something John attributed to himself with just a touch of pride—his husband still kept odd hours. It was something he was used to.

What was _odd_ was the fact that when he went out into the kitchen to get a glass of water, Sherlock was staring at the book again.

“Sherlock?” John asked, still fuzzy from sleep.

No reply.

“Hey, Sherlock?” John tried again, louder this time.

Still no response, so John shook his head and went back up to bed.

* * *

It only got weirder.

John woke up in the morning refreshed from a night of sleep to find Sherlock still looking at that damned M.C. Escher book.

Now he was spread over the dining room table with notebooks and loose papers splayed all around him. John peered over his shoulder. Diagrams and littered the table, copies of the drawings with directional arrows and notes scribbled in the margins. His eyebrows shot up.

“Have you been at this all night?”

“What?” Sherlock asked, distracted. “If I just trace the trajectory of this man with the candle, we can see that he’s about to collide with the walking man, which means that the center of gravity must be over here.” He looked pleased for all of about two seconds before his face fell, and he stabbed at the book with a pen. “But the flowers are leaning to the right!”

He crumpled up the paper he’d been working on and tore a fresh sheet from the book. “Have to account for the tilt of the—”

John yanked the book away from him.

“John!”

Sherlock glared at him bleary-eyed. He clearly hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep.

“That’s quite enough of that,” John said, snapping the book shut and grabbing the notes off the table.

Sherlock made a grab for it. “I can figure it out! I just need a little more time—and maybe coffee?” He looked at John hopefully.

John threw the book in the trash. “Nope! I think we’re chalking M.C. Escher up to another thing that we’re never doing again, like Cluedo.”

“But that was my present,” Sherlock pouted. “You can’t throw away someone else’s present, it’s _rude_.”

John stopped in his tracks. Well shit. He was right.

“What if I can get Molly to give you an interesting new corpse?”

“...Deal.”


	23. The Bet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been weeks, but John isn’t letting that blog comment go. He still has a point to prove. 
> 
> Prompt: You better watch out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: This fic is a follow-up to tei’s ficlet for the same prompt, [“Threat.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16811212/chapters/39540646) Her fic is a great read, so if you haven’t already, go read that first! And then come back and read this. And _then_ go read the rest of tei’s stuff because she’s a fantastic author and her smut is 🔥. 
> 
> **Content warning: gunplay, impact play, consensual nonconsent**

Sherlock eyed him warily as they left the police station. John noticed out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t say anything, just started whistling as he shoved his hands in his pockets and went on ahead.

The next few weeks were positively delicious. Sherlock was constantly on edge, eyeing John with suspicion. John would give Sherlock oblivious, innocent smiles as he bided his time. Sherlock might be the most brilliant man on earth, but there was one advantage John had on him: John could be very, very patient.

So it was weeks later that John walked up behind Sherlock to bring him a cup of tea. Sherlock was was bent over a chemistry experiment, deeply engrossed in something under the microscope. John set the steaming mug down gently with one hand and brought the other up to settle the barrel of his gun against the base of Sherlock’s head. He cocked it and had the distinct pleasure of hearing Sherlock’s breath stutter.

“ _ John _ ?” he breathed. “Is that—?”

“My gun pressed right up against that gorgeous skull of yours, ready to spatter your brilliant brains all over the wall if you don’t do exactly as I say?” He kept his voice casual, as though he was discussing the weather, but he dug the barrel in to drive home the point and was rewarded with a small groan. “Yeah, I’d say it is.”

“It’s unloaded,” Sherlock said, sounding flustered.

“Mm, could be.” John said. “How sure are you?”

He could practically hear the gears turning in Sherlock’s head. “98%”

His eyebrows shot up where Sherlock couldn’t see them. Really? Sherlock thought there was a 2% chance he’d pull a loaded gun on him for a bedroom game? That was… strangely fascinating. He put that away to look at it later, when he was less preoccupied.

“So on the off-chance that you’re wrong, I’d say you should get up and go to the bedroom very slowly, yeah?”

“I could disarm you.” Sherlock said.

“Could you? Faster than I could pull this trigger, do you think? Up.”

Sherlock did as he was told. He rose stiffly and John kept the gun steady as he marched him into the downstairs bedroom. They barely used it anymore, preferring to sleep in John’s room upstairs, but John actually didn’t put it past Sherlock to try to actually disarm him. A wager was a wager, after all, and Sherlock did love a good challenge.

Sherlock gasped when he saw what John had waiting there.

He’d ordered a pair of underbed restraints from the internet, thanking god that they had discreet packaging when he’d had it shipped to the clinic. After that it’d been a simple matter of hooking it up under the bed and tucking the cuffs and straps neatly away under the mattress. Unused bedroom—no cause to go looking.

Now, though, the straps were laid out across the bed, black and ominous, one at each corner. 

“Now get on the bed, and strap yourself in.”

“And if I don’t?” Sherlock challenged, mischief gleaming in his eyes. He saw Sherlock’s gaze flick to the bedside table where a bottle of lube and a pair of surgical scissors waited.

He grabbed Sherlock by the throat in an echo of the incident in Lestrade’s office, gratified by the way he could feel Sherlock’s pulse quickening beneath his hand. “Then I’ll hurt you,” John whispered in his ear, soft as a caress. Sherlock shivered, and John gave his neck one more small shake before releasing him and shoving him in the direction of the bed.

Sherlock fell onto it and leaned back, letting John look. John dragged his eyes over his lover’s body, smirking when he noticed the prominent bulge in Sherlock’s trousers. He kept the gun trained on Sherlock and kept a healthy distance as Sherlock fastened the straps first around his ankles, then around his left wrist.

John went around and checked the straps, making sure they were secure. When he was satisfied, he set the gun down on the nightstand, out of Sherlock’s reach. He dragged his hand slowly up Sherlock’s body, running it over his chest. When he walked over to Sherlock’s right side to fasten his other arm, Sherlock surged up—there was enough slack in the restraints that he had the room to try to catch John off-guard. He succeeded in knocking John in the head before John pinned his free arm and backhanded Sherlock, who spit at him.

John grinned. “You’re trouble, aren’t you?” He got Sherlock’s right wrist strapped in and stepped back to admire his handiwork, whistling low in his throat. “Pretty trouble, though.”

“Do you know who I am?” Sherlock asked, imperious as anything. His lip was starting to swell from where John had hit him, and John suddenly wanted to suck on it.

“‘Course I do,” John grinned, settling into this new game. He picked up the scissors. “You’re Sherlock Holmes, the man I’ve been sent to kill. But first—” He did something with the restraints, adjusting them so they were taut, so they pulled Sherlock spread eagle, arms and legs splayed wide so he couldn’t move at all. “I thought we could have a little fun.”

Sherlock blushed and looked away, and oh, if that wasn’t the loveliest sight John had ever seen.

“Completely immobile, didn’t we say?” John whispered into Sherlock’s ear, breaking character for a moment. He gave his earlobe a light suck, drawing a moan from him. “I’d say I’ve won, and now I’ll be taking my prize. Color?”

“Green,” Sherlock sighed.

He pulled back and put on the role of captor again. John grinned and set the scissors to the ankle of Sherlock’s trousers and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Now let’s see what you look like under here, shall we?”

Sherlock tried to kick, but the tether was so short that it manifested in a minute jerk. He gave Sherlock a small whack. “None of that. Wouldn’t want to cut up your pretty skin.” He set one scissor blade against Sherlock’s face. “But I will if you don’t behave.”

He dragged it down the curve of his cheekbone with just enough pressure to hurt but not enough to pierce the skin. It left a raised weal, and Sherlock was panting by the time he’d finished.

John returned to the cuff of his pants and made quick work of cutting them away. Years as an army doctor had taught him how to do this efficiently, as if a man’s life depended on it. The scissors  _ snicked _ and the expensive fabric fell away. John made sure to dig it into Sherlock’s skin as he worked, making him shiver as the cold steel traced over his thigh, across the concave flat of his belly, down each hip bone.

A split second decision had him cutting away Sherlock’s shirt too. He could have unbuttoned it, but it was so fun to watch Sherlock squirm. “These clothes probably cost more than my rent,” John said, brusque and still in character, as though Sherlock didn’t know exactly how much his rent was.

“They probably did,” Sherlock said, and his voice broke on a sniffle. His voice took on a put-on, pleading tone that made John’s knees grow weak and his belly feel hollow with hunger as he whispered low and frantic, “Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone that you took me, I swear it.” 

John paused like he was considering it. “What’s in it for me?” He asked, voice grown husky and dark in a way that had nothing to do with pretend.

Oh  _ god _ , now Sherlock was squeezing out real tears. They were glistening on his lashes, and it sent a shot of hot want to John’s gut. This brilliant, brutal fucking madman. 

“ _ Please _ ,” Sherlock continued. “I’ll— I’ll be good, only I have a husband at home. I have to get back to him, please.”

Sherlock begging  _ did _ things to him. John groaned and threw the scissors to the side, kneeling on the bed so he could crawl up Sherlock’s naked body and press their mouths together. The kiss was perfect for a few, brilliant seconds. Their tongues slid together hot and hungry, and John’s hands roamed across Sherlock’s bare chest, desperate to soak up the feel of all his warm, soft skin. He shoved Sherlock’s ruined clothes aside to get closer—

—and then the fucker  _ bit _ him.

John jerked back, touching his throbbing lip and pulling away fingertips slick with blood. Sherlock was grinning, wide and red-toothed, and now John could see where he had worked one of the cuffs loose.

He hit Sherlock in the face once, and then again, open-palmed smacks that sounded loud in the quiet room. “Oh, now you’re definitely not getting out of this alive,” he growled. It was a lot easier to play menacing when he was actually  _ bleeding _ .

John grabbed for the lube off the nightstand and wrenched Sherlock’s already spread legs even wider. “Do you know what’s going to happen now?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” he said, trying for bored, but the effect was ruined by the soft moan he gave when John rubbed a slick finger along his entrance.

“I’m going to fuck you until you scream,” John said, pressing in just a little. He teased at his hole, circling it with firm pressure, pressing just hard enough to dip in now and then. “Until you’ve screamed yourself hoarse and you beg me to stop.”

“I don’t— _ ah _ —believe you.”

He worked Sherlock open quick and hard. Sherlock winced at the intrusion of a second finger, too quick for comfort, but his eyes slid closed when John brushed his fingers over his prostate. He did it again, determined to get a reaction out of Sherlock who was stubbornly keeping his lips shut tight.

“Look at me,” John demanded, grabbing Sherlock’s face in his other hand. That startled a moan from him, and the sudden eye contact felt like a shock. Sherlock’s eyes were still wet with tears, and John brushed his thumb along his lashes and brought it to his mouth to taste it. He groaned, and Sherlock clenched around him at the sight.

He withdrew his fingers and undid his belt, pushing his pants down on his hips and releasing Sherlock’s ankles. Sherlock drew his legs up without a word, and John sank into him with a shudder.

“Keep looking at me,” John said. “I want you to watch.”

He fucked him deep and slow, keeping a hand fisted in his curls, watching Sherlock watching him.

It went on until it didn’t, until Sherlock dropped all pretense of the game they were playing. “John, fuck, John,” he said, head thrown back. His back was arching off the bed, body curved taut like a beautiful bowstring, ready to snap. “Touch me, please,” he begged.

“I don’t know,” John teased, pressing soft kisses into his shoulder. “I kind of like you like this.” He rocked into Sherlock again, a slow, lazy rhythm that made Sherlock squirm. “Desperate.” And again. “Needy.”

“ _ John _ ,” Sherlock sobbed.

“Have I won?” John asked.

“Yes,” Sherlock grit out. “You won, you won. I was wrong, come  _ on _ .”

John was a benevolent victor. He reached down and wrapped his hand around Sherlock’s cock and let him come at last.


	24. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love can be a sharp-edged thing, an all-consuming fire; but it’s also comfort, sweetness, and home. 
> 
> Prompt: Snowman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the end, at last. Thank you so much for reading, everyone who has been following along. It was a real joy!

John wakes up just before dawn, and Sherlock isn’t anywhere to be found. John shrugs to himself and sets about making tea. It's early yet, but he won't be able to fall back asleep. Something catches his eye out the window.

There, on the deserted sidewalk leading up to 221B, is his missing husband building a snowman.

John smiles and takes down another mug and another tea bag. By the time the tea is steeped and he brings it outside, the sun is beginning to come up, and Sherlock is almost done.

“Is this for a case?” John asks as he hands Sherlock the steaming mug of tea.

Sherlock looks at John as though he’s lost his mind. “No, John,” he says slowly. “This is a snowman.”

John rolls his eyes. “Yes, thank you. You know I’m not actually an idiot, right?”

Sherlock shrugs in a way John decides not to interpret as “It’s nice that you think that.” It’s a nice morning, and he isn't in the mood to bicker. The air is blustery and cold, and the sun is glimmering in golden patches on the snow. The world is quiet in a way that it often isn't in London.

He tucks his hands into his coat pockets and watches Sherlock put the finishing touches on his snowman. Sherlock doesn’t look at him. He’s entirely focused on his task, with the same intensity John usually sees reserved for a crime scene. His cheeks are pink with cold, and there are snowflakes clinging to his hair. John’s hand twitches with the desire to sweep them free.

Instead he walks up beside Sherlock and starts making a snowman of his own. His is smaller, stouter. As Sherlock finishes with his own, he starts to wordlessly help John. Soon there are two snowmen standing side by side, guarding 221B, looking out onto the street.

In a fit of inspiration, John pulls Sherlock’s scarf off and wraps it around the taller snowman’s neck. Then he puts his hat on the other snowman. It's silly and frivolous and somehow just right.

He steps back to admire his handiwork, and Sherlock comes to lean against him.

“Perfect.” Sherlock says, nudging John’s shoulder with his own.

John looks up at him, sees his eyes glittering in the early morning light, smile lighting up his face. His colleague and lover and friend, and no one of those things more important than the other. His partner through heaven and hell. His future.

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can check out my [original writing here](https://hopezane.com) if you're interested.
> 
> [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture) | [Tumblr](http://lovetincture.tumblr.com) | [Dreamwidth](http://lovetincture.dreamwidth.org)


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